WESTERN SHORES. 271 



seen the sea only on the east coast of England, can 

 form but a feeble conception of that 



glorious mirror, where the Almighty form 



Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 



Calm or convulsed in breeze, or gale, or storm, 



Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime, 



Dark heaving ; boundless, endless, and sublime. 



The general colour of the water, and the play of 

 light on the surface, are totally different on our eastern 

 and western coasts. The greater depth near land on 

 a rock-bound shore, and the different colour of the 

 bottom, cause the waters on the west coast to have a 

 deeper blue ; and the absence of sand and mud give 

 them greater clearness, so that it is not uncommon, in 

 gliding along in a boat, to see below us sea-weeds waving 

 and fishes swimming at a depth of many fathoms. But 

 it is not merely in colour that the western ocean sur- 

 passes the sea on our eastern coasts. The broad At- 

 lantic, free from impediments for a thousand leagues, 

 breasts high against the rocks ; and even in summer 

 there is often a swell such as is seen only in the 

 storms of winter elsewhere. These ground-swells, clear 

 as emerald, moving in with a slow and stately step, 

 break in thunder on the rocks, throwing up glorious 

 showers of spray : and this amid the sunshine of a 

 summer's noon, when there is no wind, or only suffi- 

 cient breeze from the land to throw back the top of the 

 wave in a feathery crest, while the great mass of water, 

 with arching neck, breaks in an opposite direction. 

 Not that such occurs on every summer day : there are 

 times when the ocean takes its rest. But these great 



