It> COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



a subtle, ineffable charm does indeed overhang it, which no 

 creative insight, no wealth of language, can catch. From 

 Homer to Tennyson the poets have been at work upon it and 

 cannot express this magic charm. Stansfield's pencil has per- 

 petuated its rougher moods, and Turner its sunlit glories ; we 

 hang enraptured over Mr. Brett's realistic limnings of its summer 

 purples and Mr. Hook's green swells from which the salt spray, 

 torn off by the rising breeze, almost strikes fresh upon our 

 senses, yet is there a further secret which their artistic touch 

 cannot grasp. The seaside dweller sees it on the dancing 

 waves when the joyful light of dawn comes rippling over them 

 from the gateways of the East, and in the clear sparkles of a 

 noontide sea. He woos it, too, in the tender aerial blues which 

 float around its face just before the moon seeks her throne in 

 the cloudless azure above. This nameless charm is compoun- 

 ded of glitter, profundity, and extension. No painter has 

 seized it so vividly as Claude, and Wordsworth happily suggests 

 its manifold mystery in the lines 



" Stealthy withdrawings, interminglings mild 

 Oflight with shade, in beauty reconciled." 



This indefinable sea-charm can only be realised when actu- 

 ally face to face with it. The sea itself can alone satisfy its 

 votary. It is this nameless spell which year by year summons 

 so many susceptible natures within its influence. Like a coy 

 beauty, we cannot win her, and yet we cannot content our- 

 selves away from her presence. Every one recognises the 

 power and grandeur of the sea in a storm, but only the finest 

 souls are stirred with its marvels when a summer calm holds it 

 in submission, and it is mostly in summer only that people 

 know the sea. 



How many have wished to recollect their thoughts on first 

 seeing the ocean ! Memory cannot recall them. This is a 

 penalty men pay for travelling at so much earlier an age than 



