A YEAR AT THE SHORE. 



JANUAKY. 



How grandly those heavy waves are rolling in upon 

 this long shingle-beach ! Onward they come, with an 

 even deliberate march that tells of power, out of that 

 lowering sky that broods over the southern horizon ; 

 onward they come, onward ! onward ! each following 

 its precursor in serried ranks, ever corning nearer and 

 nearer, ever looming larger and larger, like the resistless 

 legions of a great invading army, sternly proud in its 

 conscious strength ; and ever and anon, as one and 

 another dark billow breaks in a crest of foam, we may 

 fancy we see the standards and ensigns of the threaten- 

 ing host waving here and there above the mass. 



Still they drive in ; and each in turn curls over its 

 green head, and rushes up the sloping beach in a long- 

 drawn sheet of the purest, whitest foam. The drifted 

 snow itself is not more purely, spotlessly white than is 

 that sheet of foaming water. How it seethes and 



A 



