14 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



Just as the children, however, round their sand-fort, or the 

 lovers on the cliff-seat, do not trouble themselves about the 

 reasons which brought them there, but gratefully accept the 

 cool air and lovely view, we are well content to leave such 

 speculations to the statist and future historian. The white 

 sea-birds call shrilly, and the incoming tide is ruffled into 

 silver foam on the long, yellow sands. It is the time for enjoy- 

 ment and not for social science. 



The most miserable kind of happiness at the seaside is to be 

 found by visiting Scarborough or Brighton solely for the purpose 

 of mingling in their fashionable gaities. The frivolities of life 

 may well be reserved for Mayfair and the season. To fly 

 thence to a fifth-rate imitation of them at crowded hotels by 

 the sea is to contemn the influence of its fresh, vast solitude, 

 and deliberately to put out of sight its opportunities for quiet 

 recreation. Yet at a certain period in most men's lives, as in 

 the existence of States, the pride of wealth and luxury thus 

 degrades the sea to minister to its pleasures, and the delights 

 of the Bay of Baiae in the time of Augustus, or of Biarritz under 

 the French Empire, irresistibly claim their votaries. Fortun- 

 ately, human beings recover from this temporary aberration by 

 milder remedies than those which visit an empire; and the 

 maiden whose sole delight lay in dancing away the blessed 

 hours of moonlight on quiet waters in a fool's paradise at 

 Scarborough, lives to rejoice in watching her children wetting 

 their feet in the pools of a dull Cornish fishing village. Those 

 old days retire into dreamland ; save for their amusing contrasts 

 with the present, we gladly bestow them as alms for oblivion. 



On the other hand, the happiest mode of enjoying the sea is 

 to put on an old coat and thick boots, and then, 



" Procul negotiis 

 Ut prisca gens mortalium," 



- - j. o 



to give oneself up to thorough indolence and receptivity of 



