50 RAMBLES AND REVERIES. 



strands of those Cornish coves, or on the quiet 

 waters of those Cornish bays, or on the wild 

 nigged cliffs that rib them round as with im- 

 pregnable barriers : " If you still preserve any of 

 those illusions which, day by day, are vanishing 

 amid the turmoils of life, if you regret the dreams 

 that have fled never to return, go to the ocean side, 

 and there on its sonorous banks you will assuredly 

 recall some of the golden fancies that shed their 

 radiance over the hours of your youth. If your 

 heart have been struck by any of those poignant 

 griefs which darken a whole life, go to the borders 

 of the sea, seek out some lonely beach, beyond 

 reach of the exacting conventionalities of society, and 

 when your spirit is well-nigh broken with anguish, 

 seek some elevated rock, where your eye may at once 

 scan the heaving ocean and the firmament above ; 

 listen to the grand harmonious voices of the winds and 

 waves, as at one moment they seem to murmur gen- 

 tle melodies, and at another swell in the thundering 

 crash of their majesty ; mark the capricious undu- 

 lations of the waves, as far as the bounds of the 

 horizon, where they merge into the fantastic figures 

 of the clouds and seem to rise before your eyes into 

 the liquid sky above. Give yourself up to the sense 

 of infinitude which is stealing over your mind, and 

 soon the tears you shed will have lost their bitter- 

 ness ; you will feel ere long that there is nothing 

 in this world which can so thoroughly alleviate the 

 sorrows of the heart as the contemplation of nature, 

 and of the sublime spectacle of creation, which leads 

 us back to God " (Rambles of a Naturalist, I. 120). 



