LIFE IN AN ISLAND. 95 



mark the line of human habitations, it would be but 

 a gloomy and silent grandeur. And tragic and terrible 

 are the memories that Poetry has woven about that 

 coast ; for yonder lie the tiny islets detached rocks 

 greened over with deceitful verdure where the 

 Sirens sang. A little personal experience of such 

 storms as change the face of heaven in a moment, 

 and make the skies darken and the sea rise, gives a 

 reality to the tale, and makes one hold one's breath. 

 In the sudden tumult, through the sudden gloom, 

 with those vast cliffs looming in the blackness under 

 the lee, it is not difficult to conjure up the broken 

 notes of that song which tempted the mariner to his 

 fate. But no imagination could be more utterly out 

 of accord with the caressing sweetness of this day- 

 light sea. 



The humble hermit stands at his chapel door, and 

 takes no heed of one's musings ; and unless it were 

 a Aveary ghost of Tiberius's day, or perhaps a more 

 recent spectre of one's own, there is nothing here to 

 interrupt the silence. The sea comes very softly to 

 the foot of the precipice, sheer down eighteen hun- 

 dred feet, and breathes upwards a compassionate 

 hush, so soft and oft-repeated that one comes to feel 

 as if he meant it, and had woven the observation of 

 ages, the result of all his long spectatorship of human 

 grief, into that one compassionate syllable. Hush ! 

 If you listen, you will find that the very air has 

 caught the trick, and breathes it after him in keys 



