200 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



dancing, laugliing, breaking in uninterrupted music, ever 

 since I had left it. While I was bustling through crowded 

 streets, amid the "fever and tlie stir unprofitable," har- 

 assed by printers, bored by politicians, 



" Tlie weary, weaiy A, and the barren, ban-en B," 



bending over old books, engaged in serious work and daily 

 frivolous talk, tlirough all these hurrying hours, the tides 

 had continued rising and receding, the pools had been filled 

 and refilled, the zoopliytes had quietly dedicated their beauty 

 to the sun, the molluscs had crawled among the weeds, the 

 currents of life had ebbed and flowed in the great systole 

 and diastole of nature. 



By a mysterious law, every Thirst blindly, yet unerringly, 

 finds its way to the fountain. My thirst had led me here, to the 

 shored of that ocean which Homer, " the paragon of philoso- 

 phers," as Kabelais calls him, very unphilosophically styles 

 "unfruitful," areuygrog. Barren, it may have been to him, 

 poor fellow, unable to use the microscope (lie was blind, you 

 know I) ; yet even he had intellectual vision enough to see that 

 it was /AsyaxjjT-jj; " abounding in marvels; " and he was not a 

 man to pause open-mouthed at a slight deviation from ordi- 

 nary ai)pearances, as may be gathered from this single 

 example : when Helen passes through the gates of Troy, 

 under tlie eyes of Ucalegon and Antenor, those venerable and 

 inspired men are by Homer seen to be " like cicada.' chirping 

 on the trees " — surely a very strange phenomenon ? — and as 

 if this were not enough, their chirp is said to have a lily-like 

 sound — ocra y.noiUeaav — surely a strange intonation ? If, 



