168 A SALT BREEZE. 



Something here has passed, probably a cyclone far at 

 sea ; and these breakers, with their epic swing, are 

 the echo of its retreating footsteps. 



Nothing is more singular and unexpected to the 

 landsman than the combing of the waves, a momen- 

 tary perpendicular or incurving wall of water, a few 

 yards from shore, with other water spilling or pouring 

 over it as over a mill-dam, thus exhibiting for an in- 

 stant a clear, perfectly-formed cataract. But instantly 

 the wall crumbles, or is crushed down, and in place of 

 it there is a wild caldron of foaming, boiling water 

 and sand. 



There seems to be something more cosmic, or shall 

 I say astronomic, in the sea than in the shore. Here 

 you behold the round back of the globe : the lines are 

 planetary. You feel that here is the true surface of 

 the sphere, the curving, delicate sides of this huge 

 bubble. On the land, amid the wrinkles of the hills, 

 you have place, fixedness, locality, a nook in the chim- 

 ney-corner ; but upon the sea you are literally adrift ; 

 place is not, boundaries are not, space is vacant. You 

 are upon the smooth disk of the planet, like a man be- 

 striding the moon. Under your feet runs the line of 

 the earth's rotundity, and round about you the same 

 curve bounds your vision. 



\ Then the sea brings us nearer that time when the 

 earth was without form and void, a vast, shoreless, 

 and therefore voiceless, sea. You look upon the youth 

 of the world ; there is no age, no change, no decay 

 here. It is older than the continents, and, in a meas- 



