SENTENCED TO DEATH 175 



in tangible material substance.' The same thoughts came 

 to him as he looked at the old pottery in the Brighton 

 Museum. ' The Breeze on Beachy Head ' has something 

 of the joy of ' The Poacher,' and also a deeper one and a 

 humanity more wide : 



' The waves coming round the promontory before the 

 west wind still give the idea of a flowing stream, as they 

 did in Homer's days. Here, beneath the chff, standing 

 where beach and sand meet, it is still ; the wind passes 

 six hundred feet overhead. But yonder, every larger 

 wave rolling before the breeze breaks over the rocks ; a 

 white line of spray rushes along them, gleaming in the 

 sunshine ; for a moment the dark rock-wall disappears, till 

 the spray sinks. 



' The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its 

 surface on a higher level — raised like a green mound — as 

 if it would burst in and occupy the space up to the foot 

 of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know ; but 

 there is an infinite possibility about the sea ; it may do 

 what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be 

 ordered ; it may overleap the bounds human observation 

 has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There 

 is still something in it not quite grasped and understood — 

 something still to be discovered — a mystery. 



' So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall 

 of rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments of the 

 wave, again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion holds the 

 mind, as an invisible force holds back the tide. A faith of 

 expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from the 

 unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the 

 endless space out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy 

 hope. 



' The httle rules and Httle experiences, all the petty 

 ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the ponderous 

 and impassable cliff ; as if we had dwelt in the dim light 

 of a cave, but coming out at last to look at the sun, a great 

 stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that there was 

 no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts 



