CASTLES BY THE SEA 67 



and are borne by it, abandoned to it, effortless, even 

 as a ball of thistledown is borne ; and then, merely 

 by willing it, without any putting forth of strength, 

 without a pulsation, to rise vertically a thousand feet, 

 to dwell again and float upon an upper current, 

 to survey the world from a greater altitude and re- 

 joice in a vaster horizon. To fly like that ! To do 

 it all unconsciously, merely by bringing this or that 

 set of ten thousand flight muscles into play, as we 

 will to rise, to float, to fall, to go this way or that to 

 let the wind do it all for us, as it were, while the sight 

 is occupied in seeing and the mind is wholly free ! 

 The balloons and other wretched machines to which 

 men tie themselves to mount above the earth serve 

 only to make the birds' lot more enviable. I would 

 fly and live like them in the air, not merely for the 

 pleasure of the aerial exercise, but also to experience 

 in larger measure the sense of sublimity. 



But this is a delusion, seeing that we possess such 

 a sense only because we are bound to earth, because 

 vast cliffs overhanging the sea and other altitudes are 

 in some degree dangerous. At all events Nature 

 says they are, and we are compelled to bow to her 

 whether we know better or not. We cannot get over 

 the instinct of the heavy mammalian that goes on the 

 ground, whose inherited knowledge is that it is death 

 or terrible injury to fall from a considerable height. 

 Only so long as we are quite safe is this instinct a 

 pleasurable one ; but when we look over the edge of 

 a sheer precipice, how often, in spite of reason, does 

 the pleasure, the fearful joy, lose itself in apprehen- 



