FEBRUARY. 35 



houses, and even over the loftiest towers and 

 churches too, as I have seen it, to an amazing- 

 extent, till the water ran down the walls like 

 rain, and the windows, at a great distance from 

 the beach, were covered with a salt incrustation 

 — the vessels meanwhile labouring amidst the 

 riotous billows as for life, and tugging at their 

 cables, as if mad for their escape. Many a 

 beautiful, many a wild, many an animating 

 spectacle is to be witnessed on the shores of 

 our happy isle in such moments. What anxious 

 groups are collected on the quays of populous 

 ports ! What lonely peril is encountered on 

 distant strands, where the solitary fisherman 

 picks up a troubled and precarious livelihood ! 



Then too for the most animated scene which 

 the inland country can exhibit in all the twelve 

 months, a scene mixed with no slight touches of 

 the grotesque. Wherever you go, the people, 

 perhaps suddenly aroused from the tranquil fire- 

 side of a Sunday afternoon, are swarming upon 

 the roofs of their houses like bees startled from 

 their cells, by the unexpected appearance of 

 some formidable intruder, toiling to resist the 

 outrageous attack of the storm upon the thatch ; 

 which is, here and there, torn clean from the 

 rafters, and in other places heaves and pants 

 as if impatient to try a flight into the next fields, 

 or garden. There is an universal erection of 



