26 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



vail, there is every probability that each summer to come it 

 will increase in popularity. 



More frequently the familiar walks of the seaside, the long 

 yellow stretch of sand, the white lighthouse, or the upland 

 down, will induce a pleasing melancholy as manhood recalls 

 the old loves and friendships of which they alone remain mute 

 yet eloquent mementoes. Sundered from fair faces and win- 

 ning smiles, it may be by death or circumstances strong as 

 death, the whispers of old days, the aspirations long since 

 crushed out of the heart, again wake to life. Sweet and bitter 

 memories succeed one another as light and shade chequer the 

 ocean spread out in front, while we lean on the stone wall by 

 the ripening barley 



" Oh, sad it is, in sight of foreign shores, 

 Daily to think on old familiar doors, 

 Hearths loved in childhood, and ancestral floors ; 

 Or, tossed about along a waste of foam, 

 To ruminate on that delightful home 

 Which with the dear betrothed was to come ; 

 Or came, and was, and is, yet meets the eye 

 Never but in the world of memory, 

 Or in a dream recalled." * 



Even a window in Myrtle Cottage may in fancy frame a face 

 unseen for thirty years, yet never forgotten ; and spite of the 

 old boat on the little beach across the river by the wych-elms 

 looking so commonplace, words were once spoken in it which 

 for two people at least have changed the face of the world. 



A merry peal of laughter and the pattering of many feet re- 

 call us to the present. We have wandered to the Children's 

 Corner, where the sand-castles and mimic forts, each sapped 

 one by one as the relentless waves sweep on, will not unaptly 

 type the future fortunes and aspirations of many amongst these 

 busy little ones. While blessing kind nature for their uncon- 

 scious minds, who can avoid moralising over his own past at 



* Wordsworth, Poetical Works, vol. iv., p. 136. 



