180 
ISLES AND THEIR ROMANCE. 
to see how they rose at our approach, and settled down once more as 
we advanced, so that we had a flock of birds always behind and before 
us on the ground, and one attending us with wild shrieks in the air. 
Anon, we saw a range of black objects sitting, as it seemed, on thick 
cushions, and were aware of a noisome smell of fish. They were the 
cormorants on their nests; and, as we came nearer, one after another 
flapped its wings, rose sullenly, and flew circling over us, now and 
then sweeping down on a sudden close to our heads, and mingling 
their harsh croaking cry with the general din." 
There is — to us, at all events — a peculiar attraction about the 
Islands. They seem to be the natural haunt and home of fair Romance. 
Old-world legends and poetic fancies invest their shores with "the 
consecration and the poet's dream." Aphrodite, the divinely beautiful, 
was worshipped in an island. Ariadne, when deserted by her perfidi- 
ous lover, was left to mourn in an island-solitude. Theocritus, chief of 
pastoral poets, was born in an island. Poetry and History both claim 
the islands as their own. Think of ^gina and its heroes ; of Capri 
and its imperial splendours ; of Scio, Homer's birthplace ; of Rhodes, 
where the Christian knights withstood so gallantly the onset of the 
Moslem ; of Cyprus, with its recollections of Richard the Lion-hearted ; 
of Ischia, the retreat of Vittoria Colonna ; of that island in the blue 
JEgean where Haidee and young Juan loved not wisely but too well ; 
of Madeira, discovered by an Englishman and his fair bride ; of that 
fair, palm-fringed isle in the Pacific, where Enoch Arden heard the 
chimes of the marriage - bells ; of Pitcairn Island, and its Arcadian 
community; of that island in the Caribbean Sea which loomed on 
the rapt gaze of Columbus after his long voyage across the unknown 
deep ; of Calypso's island, with all its magical beauty ; of Prospero's 
isle, with its " sweet noises " and its tricksy Aiiel. Think of — but 
have we not proved our case ? Is it not true that with the islands, 
whether smiling under a Southern sun or opposing with strong cliffs 
the violence of Northern waters, much that is best and brightest in 
the world's history and the world's romance has ever been associated ? 
And is it not fi'om an island, compassed by the inviolate sea, that the 
