rious side, which is inaccessible to
man. Here she keeps all strange secretions of life. Here that the
unknown wonders of the sea are assembled.

Promontories, forelands, capes, headlands, breakers, and shoals are
veritable constructions. The geological changes of the earth are
trifling compared with the vast operations of the ocean. These breakers,
these habitations in the sea, these pyramids, and spouts of the foam are
the practicers of a mysterious art which the author of this book has
somewhere called "the Art of Nature." Their style is known by its
vastness. The effects of chance seem here design. Its works are
multiform. They abound in the mazy entanglement of the rock-coral
groves, the sublimity of the cathedral, the extravagance of the pagoda,
the amplitude of the mountain, the delicacy of the jeweller's work, the
horror of the sepulchre. They are filled with cells like the wasps'
nest, with dens like menageries, with subterranean passages like the
haunts of moles, with dungeons like Bastiles, with ambuscades like a
camp. They have their doors, but they are barricaded; their columns, but
they are shattered; their towers, but they are tottering; their bridges,
but they are broken. Their compartments are unaccommodating; these are
fitted for the birds only, those only for fish. They are impassable.
Their architectural style is variable and inconsistent; it regards or
disregards at will the laws of equilibrium, breaks off, stops short,
begins in the form of an archivolt, and ends in an architrave, block on
block. Enceladus is the mason. A wondrous science of dynamics exhibits
here its problems ready solved. Fearful overhanging blocks threaten, but
fall not: the human mind cannot guess what power supports their
bewildering masses. Blind entrances, gaps, and ponderous suspensions
multiply and vary infinitely. The laws which regulate this Babel baffle
human induction. The great unknown architect plans nothing, but succeeds
in all. Rocks massed together in confusion form a monstrous monument,
defy reason, yet maintain equilibrium. Here is something more than
strength; it is eternity. But order is wanting. The wild tumult of the
waves seems to have passed into the wilderness of stone. It is like a
tempest petrified and fixed for ever. Nothing is more impressive than
that wild architecture; always standing, yet always seeming to fall; in
which everything appears to give support, and yet to withdraw it. A
struggle between