12 MY FARM. 



trees and brooks at Leasowes. I commend the story 

 of the bankrupt poet to those who are about laying 

 out country places. 



Meantime our eye shall run where the brooks are 

 running to the sea. It must be admitted that a sea 

 view gives the final and the kingly grace to a coun- 

 try home. A lake view and a river view are well in 

 their way, but the hills hem them ; the great reach 

 which is a type, and as it were, a vision of the future, 

 does not belong to them. There is none of that joy- 

 ous strain to the eye in looking on them which a sea 

 view provokes. The ocean seems to absorb all nar- 

 rowness, and tides it away, and dashes it into yeasty 

 multiple of its own illimitable width. A man may be 

 small by birth, but he cannot grow smaller with the 

 sea always in his eye. 



It is a bond with other worlds and people : the 

 sail you watch has come from Biscay ; yesterday it 

 was white for the eye of a Biscayan ; your sympathies 

 touch by the glitter of a sail. 



The raft of smoke drifting from some steamer in 

 the offing is as humanizing, though it be ten miles 

 away, as the rattle of your neigbor's wagon by the 

 door. 



You live near a highroad to take off the edge 

 from loneliness and isolation ; but a travelled sea, 

 where all day long white specks come and go, is 



