THE SEARCH AND FINDING 



Leasowes. I commend the story of the bank- 

 rupt poet to those who are about laying out 

 country places. 



Meantime our eye shall run where the brooks 

 are running — to the sea. It must be admitted 

 that a sea view gives the final and the kingly 

 grace to a country home. A lake view and a 

 river view are well in their way, but the hills 

 hem them; the great reach which is a type, 

 and, as it were, a vision of the future, does not 

 belong to them. There is none of that joyous 

 strain to the eye in looking on them which a 

 sea view provokes. The ocean seems to absorb 

 all narrowness, and tides it away, and dashes 

 it into yeasty multiple of its own illimitable 

 width. A man may be small by birth, but he 

 cannot grow smaller with the sea always in his 

 eye. 



It is a bond with other worlds and people: 

 the sail you watch has come from Biscay; 

 yesterday it was white for the eye of a 

 Biscayan ; your sympathies touch by the glitter 

 of a sail. 



The raft of smoke drifting from some 

 steamer in the offing is as humanizing, though 

 it be ten miles away, as the rattle of your 

 neighbor's wagon by the door. 



You live near a highroad to take off the edge 



15 



