AMONGST THE SEA-BIRDS. 221 



allowed to drift wifh the tide. The birds still retreat before the 

 gig and seek the cliffs evidently, as of old, remembering the 

 chorus, 



" Since time began, 

 The race of men 

 Has ever been deceitful, faithless ever. * 



Meanwhile we rig out lines for whiting, and take a good look 

 at the fine headland of chalk as we are borne past it on the 

 tide. It was a fine sight on an autumnal morning, two or three 

 years before, to stand at its verge, and, looking out upon the 

 impervious mist, all at once see the seething volumes part and 

 disclose a ghost-like procession of thirty colliers and traders 

 silently streaming onwards almost under our feet, so closely did 

 they hug the Head. And then the mist curtain came together 

 once more, and even blotted out the sea below, though ever 

 and anon we could hear 



" The blind old ocean maundering, 

 Raking the shingle to and fro, 

 Aimlessly clutching and letting go 

 The kelp-haired sedges, 

 Slipping down with a sleeping forgetting, "f 



As is generally the case, however, the view of the great bluffs 

 wrinkled and storm-beaten face from the sea is immeasurably 

 grander. The chalk is streaked with these darker furrows, 

 which seem to soften its stern expression ; and, as a stray sun- 

 beam flits across it, the contrast between its whiteness and the 

 heaving dark swells below appears to light it up with something 

 of a sentient smile, though in all conscience on a November 

 night during an on-shore gale it is a grim step-mother to ships ! 

 Then we have seen the gleaming, smoking crests of the waver- 

 ing masses of water hurl themselves far up the rock-walls, till 

 their tops were torn off by the wind and sent flying in foam 



* Right Hon. J. H. Frere's Translation of Aristophane's Aves. Pickering, 1840. 

 t Lowell's Poems ed 1873, p. 393. 



