232 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



volume. Could the same man, one asks, have 

 written both these passages ? 



" The waves coming round the promontory 

 before the west wind still give the idea of a 

 flowing stream, as they did in Homer's days. 

 Here beneath the cliff, standing where beach 

 and sand meet, it is still ; the wind passes six 

 hundred feet overhead. But yonder, every 

 larger wave rolling before the breeze breaks 

 over the rocks ; a white line of spray rushes 

 along them, gleaming in the sunshine ; for a 

 moment the dark rock-wall disappears, till the 

 spray sinks. 



" The sea seems higher than the spot where 

 I stand, its surface on a higher level raised 

 like a green mound as if it could burst in 

 and occupy the space up to the foot of the 

 cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know ; 

 but there is an infinite possibility about the 

 sea ; it may do what it is not recorded to have 

 done. It is not to be ordered, it may overleap 

 the bounds human observation has fixed for it. 

 It has a potency unfathomable. There is still 

 something in it not quite grasped and under- 





