A TALE OF THE GRAND JARDIN 



alive. The tent was pitched on a patch 

 of black sand at the farther shore, the 

 only level spot we could find, and, climb- 

 ing a few feet higher, I looked out over 

 the bleakest prospect of crag and valley, 

 of moss and granite, till the eye met and 

 welcomed the line of the horizon, and 

 the blue above. Beside me three dead 

 whitened firs, the height of a man, were 

 held in a cleft of the rock, and some fan- 

 tastic turn of the mind made of the place 

 a wild and dreary Calvary. 



"The sea is old and the wind is old, 

 but they are also eternally young. Of 

 the elements it is only earth that speaks 

 of the never hasting never resting pass- 

 age from life to death, where the years 

 of a man are an unregarded moment in 

 the march of all things toward that end 

 which may be the beginning. Here on 

 this peak of the world's most ancient 

 hills it seemed to me as though creation 

 had long passed the flood, and was ebb- 

 ing to its final low tide. 



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