14 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



should we not think of daylight, or of woman's patient 

 love, if it were not given with such generous abund- 

 ance ? Ask the prisoner, or the man who has scarcely 

 known the mother's ceaseless tenderness, the wife's sur- 

 passing love. The coquette knows this by instinct, and 

 she draws adventiu'ous seekers after her. What a 

 coquette is the Daisy {Actinia hellis), who displays 

 her cinq-spotted bosom, beautiful as Imogen's, in the 

 crystal pool. You are on your knees at once ; but no 

 sooner is your hand stretched towards her, than at the 

 first touch she disappears in a hole. Nothing but chisel- 

 ling out the piece of rock will secure her ; your labour 

 is the price paid for the capture, and the captive is 

 prized accordingly ; if as much labour had been given 

 to the Smooth Anemone, she would have seemed as 

 lovely in your eyes. 



There is something sad in the fugitive keenness of 

 pleasure. I shall never feel again the delight of get- 

 ting my first Actmia. No rare species can give that 

 peculiar thrill. There is a bloom on the cheek which 

 the first kiss carries away, and which never again 

 meets the same lips. No partridge is worth the first 

 which falls by your gun ; no second salmon is ever 

 landed with the same pride as the first. Even printer's 

 ink has a perfume when your first "proofs" arrive. 

 Who will revive within me that flutter which deprived 

 me of all coolness and presence of mind, as first I saw 

 the long grey serpent-like tentacles of Antliea cereus 

 waving to and fro in a clear pool ? Who will restore 

 the enthusiasm of that moment when my eye first 



