gates, and urchins were dabbling in ponds in company with
ducks that seemed hardly more amphibious than themselves, and
then we drove by parks and lawns,--parks sloping, wooded,
wild; lawns studded with beds of flowers, the red geranium or
the glowing carnation, forming rich masses of dazzling
brilliancy on the smooth surface of the soft green grass. How
beautiful they were on that day, that July day, "the ancestral
homes of England," as Mrs. Hemans calls them; streams of
sunshine gilding their tall elms, their spreading oaks and
stately beeches. How that bright sunshine danced among their
leaves, and upon the grass amidst their roots, and how the
berries of the mountain ash glowed in its light,--the mountain
ash, that child of the north, which with its sturdy shape, its
coral fruit, and the gray rock from which it springs, looks
almost like a stranger in the midst of the more luxuriant
foliage of the south. But scarcely two hours had elapsed, when
we turned a comer in the road, and for the first time the sea
lay stretched before my eyes. It was rough; the waves were
crested with foam; and already I heard them break with that
sullen roar, with that voice of the ocean, in which, as in the
thunder of Heaven, we instinctively recognise the voice of
God. We drove up to the little inn where the horses were to be
put up; I could hardly wait for the step of the carriage to be
let down, and hastened alone to the beach; the sea was not, as
I have seen it since, blue and calm, glittering with a
thousand sparks of light; not like some quiet lake which
ripples on the shore, and murmurs gently, as it bathes the
shining pebbles in its limpid wave; no, it was as I would have
chosen to see it for the first time, stormy, wild, restless,
colourless from the everlasting fluctuation of colour, brown,
purple, white, yellow, green, in turns; billows over billows
chased each other to the shore, each wave gathering itself in
silence, swelling, heaving, and then bursting with that roar
of triumph, with that torrent of foam, that cloud of spray,
that mixture of fury and of joy, which nothing in nature, but
chafed waters combine.* [* See Coleridge's beautiful lines on
the Avalanches.] O God, I have suffered much; terror, remorse,
agony, have wrung my heart, have shattered my nerves; I have
been guilty; I have been wretched; I dare not thank thee for
the tumultuous joys of passion, for the feverish cup of
pleasure, hastily snatched, and as su