OCEAN GARDENS;
OR,
GLIMPSES BENEATH THE WATERS.
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CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
What the vast majority of our migratory flocks of summer and autumnal idlers generally do and think at the sea-side, cannot be better exemplified than by reference to the clever sketches which are found occupying entire pages of our illustrated periodicals and newspapers, during the season of marine migration. But the habits and customs of the annual shoal of visitors to our watering-places, may be still more intimately comprehended through the medium of the sprightly essays which generally accompany those truly artistic delineations.
And is there really nothing better to do—no better regime to go through, than the daily repetition of the monotonous programme of entertainment thus playfully described and ridiculed?
Surely the visitor at the sea-side is in reach of something more pleasant and profitable than such a routine!
Do not the sublime aspects of the ocean—the sound of its deep, ceaseless voice—the eternal on-coming of its waves, now in calm undulations, and now in hurtling wildness against the base of those cliffs whose white brows are wreathed with perennial flowers—suggest other matters both for reflection and amusement? Surely the very whispering of the breeze that has travelled so far over that vast moving surface of the fathomless deep, and which seems muttering of its mysteries, while laden with its sweet saline odour—“ce parfum acre de la mer,” as Dumas has termed it—might lead us towards other and higher trains of thought. Surely those voices in the wind, mingling with the strange murmur of the waves as they break in cadenced regularity upon the shore, rouse, in the feelings of those who hear them for the first time, or after a long absence, strange sensations of admiration, and curiosity, and wonder. But no; to most of the idle crowd those sights and sounds are invisible and unheard. Their ears have not been tutored to understand the word-music of Nature’s language, nor to read the brightly-written signs on its mighty page.