THE TIDES AT ST. MALO. 89 



are the only visible signs of the vicinity of the ocean, whose hoarse 

 murmurs are heard resounding from afar. But an astonishing 

 change takes place a few hours after, when the town, surrounded 

 by the sea, would be a complete island, but for a long, 'narrow 

 causeway called " t he Sillon," which connects it with the main- 

 land. On the side fronting the open sea, the tide breaks with 

 tremendous rage against the strong buttresses that have been 

 raised to oppose its fury, rises ibamingly to a height of thirty of 

 forty feet, and threatens the tardy wanderer as he loiters on the 

 narrow causeway. The cliffs that erewhile were seen to sur- 

 round the town are now hidden under the waters, some few 

 excepted, that raise their rugged heads like minute islands above 

 the circumambient floods. The opposite side of the cause- 

 way is also washed by the sea; but here its motions are less 

 tumultuous, for after having broken against numberless rocks and 

 made a vast circuit, it scarce retains a vestige of its primitive 

 strength. On this side lies the vast, but deserted harbour of 

 St. Malo, completely dry at ebb-tide; a wide sea during the 

 flood. 



Two eminent French authors, Chateaubriand and Lamennais, 

 wfere born at St. Malo, and there can be no doubt that the 

 imposing spectacle I have briefly described must have greatly 

 contributed to the widening of their intellectual horizon. Daily 

 witnesses from their early childhood of one of the grandest phe- 

 nomena of nature in all its wild sublimity, the boundless and 

 the infinite soon grew familiar to their mind, enriching' it with 

 splendid imagery and bold conceptions; 



Although the sun and the moon exert some attraction upon 

 the smaller and inclosed seas, yet -the development of a power- 

 ful flood-wave necessarily requires that the moon should act 

 upon a sufficiently wide and deep expanse of ocean. Even the 

 Atlantic is not broad enough for this purpose, as its equatorial 

 width measures no more than one eighth of the earth's circum- 

 ference : and the Pacific itself, notwithstanding its vast area, is 

 so studded with islands and shallows, that it presents' a much 

 more obstructed basin for the action of the tide-wave 'than 

 might be expected, from its apparent dimensions and equatorial 

 position. 



Thus it is : in the Southern Ocean, where the greatest unin- 

 terrupted surface of deep water is exposed to the influence 



