a boat can cross there, and if you cross when the water is out you risk being swallowed in. I can state that with full authority, for I nearly lost my life there. A very light vehicle in which I ventured there, and the horse that drew it, disappeared in too, and only by a perfect miracle I escaped on foot, feeling myself sinking at every step. At length, however, I reached the Rock, that gigantic Abbey, Fortress and Prison, that frowning sublimity, so well worthy of the scene which it so sternly dominates. This is no place for a detailed description of such a monument. On a huge block of granite, that Titanic pile rises and rises still, rock upon rock, age upon age, and still dungeon above dungeon. At the foot, the in pace of the Monks; higher up, the iron cage made by Louis XI.; higher still, that of Louis XIV.; higher still, the prison of our own day. And all this in a whirlwind, a perpetual tempest; a Sepulchre without the Sepulchre's peace.

Is it the fault of the sea, if this beach is treacherous? Not at all. There, as elsewhere, the Sea arrives strong and loud, indeed, but in all frankness and loyalty. The real fault is in the land, apparently solid, but undermined by numberless streams of fresh water which converts that seemingly solid beach into a treacherous and devouring quagmire. And especially is the fault in the ignorance and negligence of man. In the long dark ages when man invented the legend and the pilgrimage of the Archangel who vanquished the Devil, the Devil took possession of that deserted plain. The sea is quite innocent in the matter. Far, indeed, from doing harm, the sea upon its madly bounding waves brings in a nourishing and fecundating salt more precious than the fat slime of the Nile, enriching the once hideous marshes of Dol into the lovely gardens of our own day. The Sea is a somewhat violent mother, no doubt;—but a mother still. Abounding in fish, she lavishes upon the opposite Cancale, and upon many another bank, millions, thousands of millions, of oysters, whose crushed shells give beauty, and verdure, and flowers, and fruit. We must enter into a right understanding with the Sea, and not be led away by the false notions which its barren beach or its own more violent phenomena—often only the disguises of very real and very great benefits—may suggest to us.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEACH, THE SANDS, AND THE IRON-BOUND COAST, CONTINUED.

The headlands, the sandy beaches, the bold capes and the low shores, command various, but ever useful, views of the great sea, stern and wild at the first glance, but divine and friendly, as we come to know it better. The advantage of the headlands is that at the foot of one of those giant rock-walls we more entirely than elsewhere appreciate the breathing and bounding pulse of the sea. Insensible, imperceptible, on the Mediterranean, that pulse is very distinct on the ocean. The Ocean breathes and pulsates, even as you and I do; it compels me to calculate my days and hours, and to look up to Heaven. It reminds me alike of myself and of the world. Let me seat myself upon some such shore, that, for instance, of Antifer, whence I may look out upon that vast expanse. The sea which, but a moment agone, seemed dead, has suddenly shuddered and become tremulous—first symptom of the great approaching movement. The tide has heaved past Cherbourg and Barfleur, and turned sharply and violently round the lighthouse; its divided waters lave Calvados, rush upon Havre and come to me at Étretat, at Fécamp, at Dieppe, to hurl themselves into the canal despite the strong Northern currents. It is for me to watch its hour. Its height, almost indifferent to the sandhills, is here, at the foot of the headland, alike worthy of your attention and powerful to command it. This long rock-wall of thirty leagues has but few stairways. Its narrow inlets, which form our smaller havens, occur at rare and great distances. And at low water we can with inquiring gaze inspect and question the strata above strata, gigantically and regularly superposed, which, as so many Titanic registers, tell us the history of accumulated ages of growth and decay, of life and death. From that great open book of time every year tears away a page. We have before us a piece of an hourly perishing, hourly renewing, world, which the sea from beneath is hourly devouring, and the torrents and the tempests, the frosts and the thaws from above, are hourly, and still more destructively, attacking. Wearing, crushing, beating, pulverising, wave, and wind, and storm and Time, that great Edax rerum, that unsparing and untiring Moth of the Universe, are, even as we gaze, converting the one vast rocky mass into the rounded and petty pebble. It is this rough work which makes this coast, so richly fertile on the land side, a real maritime desert on the seaward. A few, very few, sea plants survive the eternal crushing and grinding of the ever crushed and ever crushing pebbles driven hither and thither by every wave that every wind scourges into motion. The molluscæ, and even the very fish shun this vexed shore. Great contrast that between an inland country so genial, and such a stern, rugged, threatening and inhospitable coast.

It is only to be seen thoroughly when looked down upon from the bold headland. Below, the hard necessity of toiling over the beach, the sand yielding, and the pebbles round, hard, and rolling, makes the task of traversing this narrow beach a real and violent gymnastic exercise. No; let us keep to the heights where splendid villas, noble woods, the waving harvests, the delicious gardens which even to the very edge of the great rocky wall, look down upon that magnificent channel which separates the two shores of the two great empires of the world.

The land and the sea! What more! Both, here, have a great charm; nevertheless, he who loves the sea for her own sake, he who is her friend, her lover, will rather seek her in some less varied scene. To be really intimate with her, the great sandy beaches, provided, always, that they be not too soft, are far more convenient. They allow of such infinite strolls! They suffer us so well to build up our air castles, and to meditate upon so many things; they allow us to hold such familiar and deep conference with that never silent sea! Never do I complain of those vast and free arenas in which others find themselves so ill at ease. When there, I am never less lonely than when alone. I come, I go, I feel that ever present sea. It is there, ever there, the sublime companion; and if haply that companion be in gentle mood, I venture to speak, and the great companion does not disdain to speak to me again. How many things have we not said to each other in those quiet wastes, when the crowd is away, on the limitless sands of Scheveningen, Ostend, Royan, and Saint Georges. There it is that in long interviews we can establish some intimacy with the Sea, acquire some familiarity with its great speech.

When from the towers of Amsterdam the Zuyderzee looks muddy, and when at the dykes of Scheveningen the leaden waves seem ready to overleap the earthy mound, the Sea wears its least pleasing aspect; yet I confess that this combat between land and water attracts me forcibly—this great invention, this mighty effort, this triumph of man's skill and man's labor, over the fiercest force of inanimate nature.

And this sea also pleases me by the treasures of fecund life which I know to abound in its dark depths. It is one of the most populous in the world. On the night of St. John, when the fishery opens, you may see another sea arise from the