188 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



creeks along the wavy shores raised expectation tiptoe, 

 forcing liope into certainty of treasures abounding. Wliat- 

 ever drawbacks Scilly might possibly have in store, this at 

 least was indubitable — the hunting would be good. Not 

 that any shadow of a drawback darkened the horizon ; for 

 what could the heart desire more? Here was a little 

 archipelago, such as Greek heroes might have lived in — 

 ])old, rugged, picturesque, — secure from all the assaidts of 

 idle watering-place frequenters, — lovely to the eye, full of 

 promise to the mind — health in eveiy breeze. Ithaca was 

 visibly opposite. Homer's cadences were sweetly audible. 

 Here one might write epics finer than the Odyssey, had one 

 but genius packed up in one's carpet-bag ; and if the genius 

 had been forgotten, left behind (by some strange oversight), 

 at any rate there was the microscope and scalpel, with which 

 one might follow in the tracks of the " stout Stagyrite," 

 whom the world is now beginning to recognise among the 

 greatest of its naturalists. Homer, or Aristotle? The 

 modest choice lay there ; and as Montaigne says — " nous 

 allons par la quester une friande gloire a piper le sot 

 monde." (The sot monde being you, beloved reader.) 



It is puzzling to determine the number of the Scilly Isles, 

 because, where the largest, St Mary's, is on a scale of no 

 greater magnitude than nine miles in ch'cumference, it 

 becomes a nice point to settle how small a patch of rock is 

 to be reckoned as an island. There are some hundred, or 

 hundred and twenty distinct islets ; but of inliabited islands 

 only six. Tlie area in statute acres is 3560, and the popu- 

 lation in 1851 was, according to the ccn.sus, 2600 in 511 



