shal before my mind's eye the glorious
pageantry of the Trosachs, though, at the time of its actual revelation,
it certainly seemed to make a far more vivid impression. The delight and
exhilaration which such magnificence inspired are easily summoned back,
but not the incarnate features of them. Wild nature takes us out of
ourselves and refreshes us; but she does not reveal her secret to us, or
ally herself with anything in us less deep than the abstract soul--which
also is beyond our reach.

I am not sure that my father did not like the seaside sojourns as well
as anything else, apart from the historical connections; for the spirits
of many seafaring forefathers murmured in his heart. But he did not so
much care for the soft, yielding, brown sands on which the sea-waves
broke. The coasts to which he had been used in his youth were either
rocky or firm as a macadamized road. Nor was he beguiled into
forgetting the tedium of walking over them, as his companion was, by the
fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up on them.
Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him, gathering
these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with his gaze
fixed towards the long ridge of the horizon. The sands at Rhyl, near
which Milton's friend was said to have been lost, were like a rolling
prairie; at low tide the white fringe of the surf could scarcely be
descried at their outermost verge, yet within a few hours it would
come tumbling back, flowing in between the higher levels, flooding and
brimming and overcoming, till it broke at our feet once more. Behind us
rose the tumultuous curves and peaks of the Welsh hills; before us, but
invisible across the Irish Channel, the black coast of rainy Ireland.
One night, during a gale, a ship came ashore, so far out that it still
seemed, in the morning, to be at sea, except for its motionlessness, and
the drenched and draggled crew came straggling in--or some of them.
At Southport the beach was narrower and the little sea-side settlement
larger and livelier; a string of sleepy donkeys always waited there,
with the rout of ragged and naughty little boys with sticks to thrash
them into a perfunctory and reluctant gallop for their riders. There was
always one boy, larger and also naughtier than the rest, who thrashed
the thrashers and took their pennies away from them. The prevailing
occupation of the children at these places, as on all civilized shores,
appar