HISTORY AND THE PARISH i6i 



growth — " Nothing is that is not for ever and ever " — 

 these things and the blue sky, the vi^hite, cloudy hall of 

 the sun, and the green bough and grass, hallowed the 

 ancient stones, and clearer than any vision of tall bards 

 in the morning of the world was the tranquil delight of 

 being thus " teased out of time " in the presence of this 

 ancientness. 



It is strange to pass from these monumental moors 

 straight to the sea which records the moments, not the 

 years or the centuries. In fine weather especially its 

 colour — when, for example, it is faintly corrugated and of 

 a blue that melts towards the horizon into such a hue 

 that it is indistinguishable from the violet wall of dawn — 

 is a perpetual astonishment on account of its unearthliness 

 and evanescence. The mind does not at once accept the 

 fact that here underneath our eyes is, as it were, another 

 sky. The physical act of looking up induces a special 

 mood of solemnity and veneration, and during the act 

 the eyes meet with a fitting object in the stainless heavens. 

 Looking down we are used to seeing the earth, the road, 

 the footpath, the floor, the hearth; but when, instead, it is 

 the sea and not any of these things, although our feet 

 are on firm land, the solemnity is of another kind. In its 

 anger the sea becomes humanized or animalized : we see 

 resemblances to familiar things. There is, for instance, 

 an hour sometimes after sunset, when the grey sky coldly 

 lights the lines of white plumes on a steely sea, and they 

 have an inevitable likeness to a trampling chivalry that 

 charges upon a foe. But a calm sea is incomparable except 

 to moods of the mind. It is then as remote from the 

 earth and earthly things as the sky, and the remoteness 

 is the more astonishing because it is almost within our 



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