1 62 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



grasp. It is no wonder that a great idea was expressed by 

 the fortunate islands in the sea. The youth fulness, the 

 incorruptibility of the sea, continually renewing itself, the 

 same from generation to generation, prepares it as a fit 

 sanctuary of the immortal dead. So at least we are apt 

 to think at certain times, coming from the heavy, scarred, 

 tormented earth to that immense aery plain of peacock 

 blue. And yet at other times that same unearthliness 

 will suggest quite other thoughts. It has not changed 

 and shrunken and grown like the earth; it is not sun- 

 warmed : it is a monster that has lain unmoved by time, 

 sleeping and moaning outside the gates within which men 

 and animals have become what they are. Actually that 

 cold fatal element and its myriad population without a 

 sound brings a wistfulness into the mind as if it could 

 feel back and dimly recall the dawn of time when the 

 sea was incomprehensible and impassable, when the earth 

 had but lately risen out of the waters and was yet again 

 to descend beneath : it becomes a type of the waste where 

 everything is unknown or uncertain except death, pour- 

 ing into the brain the thoughts that men have had on 

 looking out over untrodden mountain, forest, swamp, in 

 the drizzling dawn of the world. The sea is exactly 

 what it was when mountain, forest, swamp were imper- 

 turbable enemies, and the sight of it restores the ancient 

 fear. I remember one dawn above all others when this 

 restoration was complete. When it was yet dark the 

 wind rose gustily under a low grey sky and a lark sang 

 amidst the moan of gorse and the creak of gates and the 

 deeply-taken breath of the tide at the full. Nor was it 

 yet light when the gulls began to wheel and wind and 

 float with a motion like foam on a whirlpool or inter- 



