SOCIAL SOLITUDE. 345 



bling ashore, bordering the whole coast with a fringe of 

 foam. I shot out through the surf and reached the 

 open sea ; the waves were rising and falling around me ; 

 at one time I sunk into the hollow, the hills and rocks 

 disappeared, and I saw only a valley of waters, anon I 

 was lifted up on the ridge, and laid my hand an its 

 white mane as I looked down on the shore. What 

 would you not give to be able to swim ? The exercise 

 has its mischances, however. On landing I was dashed 

 against a rock, and had to walk very softly for three 

 days after, lest I should be asked whether I was not 

 lame. 



' Is it not a pleasant thing to lie, in a fine clear 

 day, on the sea-beach, amid the round polished pebbles 

 and the pretty shells, and see through the half-shut eye 

 the little waves dancing to the sun, and hear, as if we 

 heard it not, their murmur on the shore ? To be all 

 alone shut out from the world the wide ocean stretch- 

 ing away for many a league before us, and a barrier 

 of steep cliffs towering behind. There is, my dear 

 madam, a kind of social solitude which fits us for society 

 by training us both to think and to feel ; or rather, I 

 should say, in which we are trained, solitude being but 

 the school, imagination and the social affections the 

 teachers. Let me illustrate : I lie all alone on the sea- 

 shore, but in imagination my friend is seated beside 

 me, and so my thoughts and feelings are thrown into 

 the conversational mould. My attention is alive to 

 what is passing around me, my memory active, my 

 reasoning faculties in operation, my fancy in full play; 

 and all this because the conversation must be kept up. 

 And thus friendship and solitude operate on my thoughts, 

 as the waves operate on the pebbles which lie in heaps 

 around me. There is a continual action, a ceaseless 



