A WINTER SEA. 185 



We have but to cross a high-road and we are on the 

 beach : so sudden is the transition from the intensely 

 rural to the maritime ! Now once more we feel the 

 furious northern gale; but we are warm with our 

 walk, and defy it. A moment's pause to take in this 

 characteristically wintry prospect of the sea. Beauti- 

 ful is the ocean at all times ; most sweetly beautiful 

 when it sleeps, stretched out in silvery brightness, 

 " like a molten looking-glass" under the azure sky of 

 summer; but most grand, most full of majesty and 

 power, when, as now, it chafes and foams beneath the 

 lashing gales of winter. Ha ! winter is a sterner school- 

 master than the Persian. The rollicking Euxine 

 laughed at his chastisement ; but stern Boreas knows 

 how to lay on the lash, till the writhing element 

 shrieks, and roars, and groans under the infliction. 



The gleam of sunshine is gone, and the sky has 

 settled down again in frowning gloom. A black and 

 threatening brow it wears ; and the well-whipped 

 ocean tortured but unsubdued looks up with an 

 equally threatening blackness, save where the thou- 

 sand crests of foam rise and fall, tossing and career- 

 ing on their rapid shoreward course. 



How fast they chase each other on, as if eager to 

 escape the furious strokes of the driving breeze be- 

 hind ! And when they reach the friendly strand, 

 how each in quick succession gracefully rears its green 

 glassy wall, curves-over its crest, and pours its long 

 cataract of foam high on the yellow sand ! A beauti- 

 ful sight ; but in a moment an abject ruin is all that 



