AT THE SEASIDE. 21 



and which but frown the blacker when the north wind hurls its 

 breakers on to them, only to be repulsed in clouds of spray. 

 Far out from them, too, runs into the sea a long reef of sharp- 

 edged outliers, where the waves swirl as the fishermen row 

 carefully past, while the child listens with eyes full of awe to 

 their stories of the winter storms and the gallant vessels which 

 have ere now gone to pieces on those cruel teeth. Terror 

 added to beauty has a special fascination for childhood, though 

 in a lesser way it affects us at every stage of life. It will be 

 many a summer before the child can enjoy Mr. Ruskin's 

 masterly analysis of the sea-charm that hangs around an old, 

 wave-beaten, tarred boat, but he can feel something of the 

 boat's influences from his earliest years. " In that bow of the 

 boat is the gift of another world. Without it what prison would 

 be so strong as that white and wailing fringe of sea ? What 

 maimed creatures were we all, chained to our rocks, Andro- 

 meda-like, or wandering by the endless shores, wasting our in- 

 communicable strength, and pining in hopeless watch of un- 

 conquerable waves I The nails that fasten together the planks 

 of the boat's bow are the rivets of the fellowship of the world. 

 Their iron does more than draw lightning out of heaven, it 

 leads love round the earth." * 



A curious instance of the transcendent love of the sea in a 

 thoughtful nature, and of the poor substitutes which trees or 

 other natural features furnish for its overpowering charm, occurs 

 to us as we write. In Dorothy Wordsworth's Recollections of a 

 Tour in Scotland with her brother the poet, they met Mr. 

 (afterwards Sir Walter) Scott, and Miss Wordsworth says : t 

 " The wind was tossing the branches, and sunshine dancing 

 among the leaves, and I happened to exclaim ' What a life 

 there is in trees ! ' On which Mr. Scott observed that the 

 words reminded him of a young lady who had been born and 

 educated on an island of the Orcades, and came to spend a 

 * Ruskin's Harbours of England. t 2nd ed., 1874, p. 265. 



