STONE WALLS 147 



agination, and then suddenly I realized that the sea, the 

 great, blue, boundless open sea, was on the other side of 

 that wall and when I reached the top I should behold it! 

 Just before the road reached the sharp pitch of the ridge, 

 it swung abruptly to the right, to avoid a steep ascent, 

 and here the impression was strongest. The wall 

 stretched naked against the sky. Nothing whatever was 

 visible beyond it, not even a treetop. The dome of the 

 firmament dropped down majestically behind, with in- 

 finite depths of aerial perspective where the cloud 

 ships rode, exactly as it drops down to the far horizon 

 line of the ocean. Here, at this point, I used to pause 

 and tingle with the sensation, a feeling of the im- 

 manence of the sea, an illusion amounting almost to be- 

 lief that when I reached the top I should indeed behold 

 the line where the sky and water meet. I think my 

 feeling of the sea at these moments was a more profound 

 sensation than the actual sight of the ocean ever awaked. 

 I may have been a little ashamed to confess my sensa- 

 tions to the boys who accompanied me, for I do not re- 

 call that any of them ever expressed the same illusion. 

 It would not have been strange, however, if they could 

 not share it, for none of them, as I recall, was familiar 

 with the ocean. But in after years I came upon a pas- 

 sage in Ruskin in "Modern Painters," I think 

 wherein he speaks of the strange illusion of the sea im- 

 parted by a level earth line against the sky, shutting 

 out all sight of what lies beyond, and I read his words 



