English Appreciation of the Sea-side—Its Variety and Interest—Heavy Weather—The Green Waves—On the Cliffs—The Sea from there—Madame de Gasparin’s Reveries—Description of a Tempest—The Voice of God—Calm—A Great Medusa off the Coast—Night on the Sea—Boating Excursion—In a Cavern—Colonies of Sea-anemones—Rock Pools—Southey’s Description—Treasures for the Aquarium—A Rat Story—Rapid Influx of Tide and its Dangers—Melancholy Fate of a Family—Life Under Water.
“In hollows of the tide-worn reef,
Left at low water glistening in the sun,
Pellucid pools, and rocks in miniature,
With their small fry of fishes, crushed shells,
Rich mosses, tree-like sea-weed, sparkling pebbles,
Enchant the eye, and tempt the eager hand
To violate the fairy paradise.”
The sea-side is nowhere more thoroughly appreciated than in our own rock and water girt island, as the popularity of so many of our coast watering-places fully attests. The wonders [pg 191]of the shore are so many and varied that they would require volumes like the present to do them full justice. Here, then, the subject can only be briefly discussed.[51]
“The sea-side,” says Gosse, a writer who is both artist and scientist in his powers of description, “is never dull. Other places soon tire us; we cannot always be admiring scenery, though ever so beautiful, and nobody stands gazing into a field or on a hedgerow bank, though studded with the most lovely flowers, by the half-hour together. But we can and do stand watching the sea, and feel reluctant to leave it: the changes of the tide and the ever rolling, breaking, and retiring waves are so much like the phenomena of life, that we look on with an interest and expectation akin to that with which we watch the proceedings of living beings.” The sea-shore, in all its varied aspects, has beauties and characteristics all its own.