A SALT BREEZE. 167 



ing," of which our poet sings, is not only bestrode by 

 the winds and swung by the punctual hand of the 

 tides, but the fairest summer weather gives it a 

 nudge, and the bending floor beneath it contributes 

 an impulse. Its rocking is secured beyond peradven- 

 ture. Darwin seems to think it is the cradle where 

 the primordial life of the globe had its infancy, a 

 conclusion of science anticipated by an old Greek poet 



who said, 



" Ocean, father of gods and men." 



Whether or not it rocked man, or the germ of man, 

 into being, there can be little doubt that it will con- 

 tinue to rock after he and all things else are wrapped 

 in the final sleep. 



Its grandest swing, I found during a couple of 

 weeks' sojourn upon the coast, is often upon a fair 

 day. Local winds and storms make it spiteful and 

 angry. They break up and scatter the waves ; but 

 some quiet morning you saunter down to the beach 

 and find the sea beating its long roll. The waves 

 run parallel to the shore and come in with great reg- 

 ularity and deliberation, falling upon it in a succession 

 of long, low cataracts, and you realize the force of the 

 Homeric epithet, " the far-resounding sea." It is a 

 sort of prostrate Niagara expiring in intermittent tor- 

 rents. Often there is a marked explosion from the 

 compression of the air in the hollow cylinder of the 

 curling wave. These long swells are of the character 

 of those which in the Hudson follow the passage of 

 one of the great steamers, large, measured, uniform. 



