_ What is that little brown thing whom you have just taken off the rock to which it adhered so stoutly by his sucking-foot? A limpet? Not at all: he is of quite a different family and structure; but, on the whole, a limpet-like shell would suit him well enough, so he had one given him: nevertheless, owing to certain anatomical peculiarities, he needed one aperture more than a limpet; so one, if you will examine, has been given him at the top of his shell. (15) This is one instance among a thousand of the way in which a scientific knowledge of objects must not obey, but run counter to, the impressions of sense; and of a custom in nature which makes this caution so necessary, namely, the repetition of the same form, slightly modified, in totally different animals, sometimes as if to avoid waste, (for why should not the same conception be used in two different cases, if it will suit in both?) and sometimes (more marvellous by far) when an organ, fully developed and useful in one species, appears in a cognate species but feeble, useless, and, as it were, abortive; and gradually, in species still farther removed, dies out altogether; placed there, it would seem, at first sight, merely to keep up the family likeness. I am half jesting; that cannot be the only reason, perhaps not the reason at all; but the fact is one of the most curious, and notorious also, in comparative anatomy.
NOTE:
(15) Fissurella graeca, Plate X. fig. 5.
Look, again, at those sea-slugs. One, some three inches long, of a bright lemon-yellow, clouded with purple; another of a dingy grey; (16) another exquisite little creature of a pearly French White, (17) furred all over the back with what seem arms, but are really gills, of ringed white and grey and black. Put that yellow one into water, and from his head, above the eyes, arise two serrated horns, while from the after-part of his back springs a circular Prince-of-Wales's-feather of gills, - they are almost exactly like those which we saw just now in the white Cucumaria. Yes; here is another instance of the same custom of repetition. The Cucumaria is a low radiate animal - the sea-slug a far higher mollusc; and every organ within him is formed on a different type; as indeed are those seemingly identical gills, if you come to examine them under the microscope, having to oxygenate fluids of a very different and more complicated kind; and, moreover, the Cucumaria's gills were put round his mouth, the Doris's feathers round the other extremity; that grey Eolis's, again, are simple clubs, scattered over his whole back, and in each of his nudibranch congeners these same gills take some new and fantastic form; in Melibaea those clubs are covered with warts; in Scyllaea, with tufted bouquets; in the beautiful Antiopa they are transparent bags; and in many other English species they take every conceivable form of leaf, tree, flower, and branch, bedecked with every colour of the rainbow, as you may see them depicted in Messrs. Alder and Hancock's unrivalled Monograph on the Nudibranch Mollusca.
NOTES:
(16) Doris tuberculata and bilineata.
(17) Eolis papi losa. A Doris and an Eolis, though not
of these species, are figured in Plate X.
And now, worshipper of final causes and the mere useful in nature, answer but one question, - Why this prodigal variety? All these Nudibranchs live in much the same way: why would not the same mould have done for them all? And why, again, (for we must push the argument a little further,) why have not all the butterflies, at least all who feed on the same plant, the same markings? Of all unfathomable triumphs of design, (we can only express ourselves thus, for honest induction, as Paley so well teaches, allows us to ascribe such results only to the design of some personal will and mind,) what surpasses that by which the scales on a butterfly's wing are arranged to produce a certain pattern of artistic beauty beyond all painter's skill? What a waste of power, on any utilitarian theory of nature! And once more, why are those strange microscopic atomies, the Diatomaceae and Infusoria, which fill every stagnant pool; which fringe every branch of sea-weed; which form banks hundreds of miles long on the Arctic sea-floor, and the strata of whole moorlands; which pervade in millions the mass of every iceberg, and float aloft in countless swarms amid the clouds of the volcanic dust; - why are their tiny shells of flint as fantastically various in their quaint mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery inexplicable on the conceited notion which, making man forsooth the centre of the universe, dares to believe that this variety of forms has existed for countless ages in abysmal sea-depths and untrodden forests, only that some few individuals of the Western races might, in these latter days, at last discover and admire a corner here and there of the boundless realms of beauty. Inexplicable, truly, if man be the centre and the object of their existence; explicable enough to him who believes that God has created all things for Himself, and rejoices in His own handiwork, and that the material universe is, as the wise man says, "A platform whereon His Eternal Spirit sports and makes melody." Of all the blessings which the study of nature brings to the patient observer, let none, perhaps, be classed higher than this: that the further he enters into those fairy gardens of life and birth, which Spenser saw and described in his great poem, the more he learns the awful and yet most comfortable truth, that they do not belong to him, but to One greater, wiser, lovelier than he; and as he stands, silent with awe, amid the pomp of Nature's ever-busy rest, hears, as of old, "The Word of the Lord God walking among the trees of the garden in the cool of the day."
One sight more, and we have done. I had something to say, had time permitted, on the ludicrous element which appears here and there in nature. There are animals, like monkeys and crabs, which seem made to be laughed at; by those at least who possess that most indefinable of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. As long as man possesses muscles especially formed to enable him to laugh, we have no right to suppose (with some) that laughter is an accident of our fallen nature; or to find (with others) the primary cause of the ridiculous in the perception of unfitness or disharmony. And yet we shrink (whether rightly or wrongly, we can hardly tell) from attributing a sense of the ludicrous to the Creator of these forms. It may be a weakness on my part; at least I will hope it is a reverent one: but till we can find something corresponding to what we conceive of the Divine Mind in any class of phenomena, it is perhaps better not to talk about them at all, but observe a stoic "epoche," waiting for more light, and yet confessing that our own laughter is uncontrollable, and therefore we hope not unworthy of us, at many a strange creature and strange doing which we meet, from the highest ape to the lowest polype.
But, in the meanwhile, there are animals in which results so strange, fantastic, even seemingly horrible, are produced, that fallen man may be pardoned, if he shrinks from them in disgust. That, at least, must be a consequence of our own wrong state; for everything is beautiful and perfect in its place. It may be answered, "Yes, in its place; but its place is not yours. You had no business to look at it, and must pay the penalty for intermeddling." I doubt that answer; for surely, if man have liberty to do anything, he has liberty to search out freely his heavenly Father's works; and yet every one seems to have his antipathic animal; and I know one bred from his childhood to zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and honest in feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot, after handling and petting and admiring all day long every uncouth and venomous beast, avoid a paroxysm of horror at the sight of the common house-spider. At all events, whether we were intruding or not, in turning this stone, we must pay a fine for having done so; for there lies an animal as foul and monstrous to the eye as "hydra, gorgon, or chimaera dire," and yet so wondrously fitted to its work, that we must needs endure for our own instruction to handle and to look at it. Its name, if you wish for it, is Nemertes; probably N. Borlasii; (18) a worm of very "low" organization, though well fitted enough for its own work. You see it? That black, shiny, knotted lump among the gravel, small enough to be taken up in a dessert spoon. Look now, as it is raised and its coils drawn out. Three feet - six - nine, at least: with a capability of seemingly endless expansion; a slimy tape of living caoutchouc, some eighth of an inch in diameter, a dark chocolate- black, with paler longitudinal lines. Is it alive? It hangs, helpless and motionless, a mere velvet string across the hand. Ask the neighbouring Annelids and the fry of the rock fishes, or put it into a vase at home, and see. It lies motionless, trailing itself among the gravel; you cannot tell where it begins or ends; it may be a dead strip of sea-weed, Himanthalia lorea, perhaps, or Chorda filum; or even a tarred string. So thinks the little fish who plays over and over it, till he touches at last what is too surely a head. In an instant a bell-shaped sucker mouth has fastened to his side. In another instant, from one lip, a concave double proboscis, just like a tapir's (another instance of the repetition of forms), has clasped him like a finger; and now begins the struggle: but in vain. He is being "played" with such a fishing- line as the skill of a Wilson or a Stoddart never could invent; a living line, with elasticity beyond that of the most delicate fly- rod, which follows every lunge, shortening and lengthening, slipping and twining round every piece of gravel and stem of sea- weed, with a tiring drag such as no Highland wrist or step could ever bring to bear on salmon or on trout. The victim is tired now; and slowly, and yet dexterously, his blind assailant is feeling and shifting along his side, till he reaches one end of him; and then the black lips expand, and slowly and surely the curved finger begins packing him end-foremost down into the gullet, where he sinks, inch by inch, till the swelling which marks his place is lost among the coils, and he is probably macerated to a pulp long before he has reached the opposite extremity of his cave of doom. Once safe down, the black murderer slowly contracts again into a knotted heap, and lies, like a boa with a stag inside him, motionless and blest. (19)
Notes:
(18) Plate III.
(19) Certain Parisian zoologists have done me the honour
to hint that this description was a play of fancy. I can
only answer, that I saw it with my own eyes in my own
aquarium. I am not, I hope, in the habit of drawing on
my fancy in the presence of infinitely more marvellous
Nature. Truth is quite strange enough to be interesting
without lies.
There; we must come away now, for the tide is over our ankles; but touch, before you go, one of those little red mouths which peep out of the stone. A tiny jet of water shoots up almost into your face.
The bivalve (20) who has burrowed into the limestone knot (the softest part of the stone to his jaws, though the hardest to your chisel) is scandalized at having the soft mouths of his siphons so rudely touched, and taking your finger for some bothering Annelid, who wants to nibble him, is defending himself; shooting you, as naturalists do humming-birds, with water. Let him rest in peace; it will cost you ten minutes' hard work, and much dirt, to extract him; but if you are fond of shells, secure one or two of those beautiful pink and straw-coloured scallops (Hinnites pusio, Plate X. fig. 1), who have gradually incorporated the layers of their lower valve with the roughnesses of the stone, destroying thereby the beautiful form which belongs to their race, but not their delicate colour. There are a few more bivalves too, adhering to the stone, and those rare ones, and two or three delicate Mangeliae and Nassae (21) are trailing their graceful spires up and down in search of food. That little bright red and yellow pea, too, touch it - the brilliant coloured cloak is withdrawn, and, instead, you have a beautiful ribbed pink cowry, (22) our only European representative of that grand tropical family. Cast one wondering glance, too, at the forest of zoophytes and corals, Lepraliae and Flustrae, and those quaint blue stars, set in brown jelly, which are no zoophytes, but respectable molluscs, each with his well- formed mouth and intestines, (23) but combined in a peculiar form of Communism, of which all one can say is, that one hopes they like it; and that, at all events, they agree better than the heroes and heroines of Mr. Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance."
NOTES:
(20) Saxicava rugosa, Plate XI. fig. 2.
(21) Plate VIII. represents the common Nassa, with the
still more common Littorina littorea, their teeth-studded
palates, and the free swimming young of the Nassa.
(VIDE Appendix.)
(22) Cyproea Europoea.
(23) Botrylli.
Now away, and as a specimen of the fertility of the water-world, look at this rough list of species, (24) the greater part of which are on this very stone, and all of which you might obtain in an hour, would the rude tide wait for zoologists: and remember that the number of individuals of each species of polype must be counted by tens of thousands; and also, that, by searching the forest of sea-weeds which covers the upper surface, we should probably obtain some twenty minute species more.
Note:
(24)
Molluscs.
Doris tuberculata.
- bilineata.
Eolis papillosa.
Pleurobranchus plumila.
Neritina.
Cypraea.
Trochus, - 2 species.
Mangelia.
Triton.
Trophon.
Nassa, - 2 species.
Cerithium.
Sigaretus.
Fissurella.
Arca lactea.
Pecten pusio.
Tapes pullastra.
Kellia suborbicularis.
Shaenia Binghami.
Saxicava rugosa.
Gastrochoena pholadia.
Pholas parva.
Anomiae, -2 or 3 species
Cynthia,-2 species.
Botryllus, do.
ANNELIDS.
Phyllodoce, and other Nereid worms.
Polynoe squamata.
CRUSTACEA.
4 or 5 species.
ECHINODERMS.
Echinus miliaris.
Asterias gibbosa.
Ophiocoma neglecla.
Cucumaria Hyndmanni.
- communis.
POLYPES.
Sertularia pumila.
- rugosa.
- fallax.
- filicula.
Plumularia falcata.
- setacea.
Laomedea geniculata.
Campanularia volubilis.
Actinia mesembryanthemum.
Actinia clavata.
- anguicoma.
- crassicornis.
Tubulipora patina.
- hispida.
- serpens.
Crisia eburnea.
Cellepora pumicosa.
Lepraliae,- many species.
Membranipora pilosa.
Cellularia ciliata.
- scruposa.
- reptans.
Flustra membranacea, &c. A goodly catalogue this, surely, of the inhabitants of three or four large stones; and yet how small a specimen of the multitudinous nations of the sea!
From the bare rocks above high-water mark, down to abysses deeper than ever plummet sounded, is life, everywhere life; fauna after fauna, and flora after flora, arranged in zones, according to the amount of light and warmth which each species requires, and to the amount of pressure which they are able to endure. The crevices of the highest rocks, only sprinkled with salt spray in spring-tides and high gales, have their peculiar little univalves, their crisp lichen-like sea-weed, in myriads; lower down, the region of the Fuci (bladder-weeds) has its own tribes of periwinkles and limpets; below again, about the neap-tide mark, the region of the corallines and Algae furnishes food for yet other species who graze on its watery meadows; and beneath all, only uncovered at low spring-tide, the zone of the Laminariae (the great tangles and ore-weeds) is most full of all of every imaginable form of life. So that as we descend the rocks, we may compare ourselves (likening small things to great) to those who, descending the Andes, pass in a single day from the vegetation of the Arctic zone to that of the Tropics. And here and there, even at half-tide level, deep rock-basins, shaded from the sun and always full of water, keep up in a higher zone the vegetation of a lower one, and afford in nature an analogy to those deep "barrancos" which split the high table-land of Mexico, down whose awful cliffs, swept by cool sea-breezes, the traveller looks from among the plants and animals of the temperate zone, and sees far below, dim through their everlasting vapour-bath of rank hot steam, the mighty forms and gorgeous colours of a tropic forest.
"I do not wonder," says Mr. Gosse, in his charming "Naturalist's Rambles on the Devonshire Coast" (p. 187), "that when Southey had an opportunity of seeing some of those beautiful quiet basins hollowed in the living rock, and stocked with elegant plants and animals, having all the charm of novelty to his eye, they should have moved his poetic fancy, and found more than one place in the gorgeous imagery of his Oriental romances. Just listen to him
"It was a garden still beyond all price,
Even yet it was a place of paradise;
And here were coral bowers,
And grots of madrepores,
And banks of sponge, as soft and fair to eye
As e'er was mossy bed
Whereon the wood-nymphs lie
With languid limbs in summer's sultry hours.
Here, too, were living flowers,
Which, like a bud compacted,
Their purple cups contracted;
And now in open blossom spread,
Stretch'd, like green anthers, many a seeking head.
And arborets of jointed stone were there,
And plants of fibres fine as silkworm's thread;
Yea, beautiful as mermaid's golden hair
Upon the waves dispread.
Others that, like the broad banana growing,
Raised their long wrinkled leaves of purple hue,
Like streamers wide outflowing.' - KEHAMA, xvi. 5.
"A hundred times you might fancy you saw the type, the very original of this description, tracing, line by line, and image by image, the details of the picture; and acknowledging, as you proceed, the minute truthfulness with which it has been drawn. For such is the loveliness of nature in these secluded reservoirs, that the accomplished poet, when depicting the gorgeous scenes of Eastern mythology - scenes the wildest and most extravagant that imagination could paint - drew not upon the resources of his prolific fancy for imagery here, but was well content to jot down the simple lineaments of Nature as he saw her in plain, homely England.
"It is a beautiful and fascinating sight for those who have never seen it before, to see the little shrubberies of pink coralline - 'the arborets of jointed stone' - that fringe those pretty pools. It is a charming sight to see the crimson banana-like leaves of the Delesseria waving in their darkest corners; and the purple fibrous tufts of Polysiphonia and Ceramia, 'fine as silkworm's thread.' But there are many others which give variety and impart beauty to these tide-pools. The broad leaves of the Ulva, finer than the finest cambric, and of the brightest emerald-green, adorn the hollows at the highest level, while, at the lowest, wave tiny forests of the feathery Ptilota and Dasya, and large leaves, cut into fringes and furbelows, of rosy Rhodymeniae. All these are lovely to behold; but I think I admire as much as any of them, one of the commonest of our marine plants, Chondrus crispus. It occurs in the greatest profusion on this coast, in every pool between tide-marks; and everywhere - except in those of the highest level, where constant exposure to light dwarfs the plant, and turns it of a dull umber-brown tint - it is elegant in form and brilliant in colour. The expanding fan-shaped fronds, cut into segments, cut, and cut again, make fine bushy tufts in a deep pool, and every segment of every frond reflects a flush of the most lustrous azure, like that of a tempered sword-blade." - GOSSE'S DEVONSHIRE COAST, pp. 187-189.
And the sea-bottom, also, has its zones, at different depths, and its peculiar forms in peculiar spots, affected by the currents and the nature of the ground, the riches of which have to be seen, alas! rather by the imagination than the eye; for such spoonfuls of the treasure as the dredge brings up to us, come too often rolled and battered, torn from their sites and contracted by fear, mere hints to us of what the populous reality below is like. Often, standing on the shore at low tide, has one longed to walk on and in under the waves, as the water-ousel does in the pools of the mountain burn, and see it all but for a moment; and a solemn beauty and meaning has invested the old Greek fable of Glaucus the fisherman: how eating of the herb which gave his fish strength to leap back into their native element, he was seized on the spot with a strange longing to follow them under the waves, and became for ever a companion of the fair semi-human forms with which the Hellenic poets peopled their sunny bays and firths, feeding "silent flocks" far below on the green Zostera beds, or basking with them on the sunny ledges in the summer noon, or wandering in the still bays on sultry nights amid the choir of Amphitrite and her sea- nymphs:-
"Joining the bliss of the gods, as they waken the coves with their laughter,"
in nightly revels, whereof one has sung, -
"So they came up in their joy; and before them the roll of the surges
Sank, as the breezes sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked marble
Awed; and the crags of the cliffs, and the pines of the mountains, were silent.
So they came up in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs,
Myriad fiery globes, swam heaving and panting, and rainbows,
Crimson, and azure, and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting,
Far in the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus,
Coral, and sea-fan, and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.
So they went on in their joy, more white than the foam which they scattered,
Laughing and singing and tossing and twining; while, eager, the Tritons
Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship
Fluttered the terns, and the sea-gulls swept past them on silvery pinions,
Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins
Sighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them
Curved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of their riders,
Pawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming,
Sparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the maids, and the coils of the mermen.
So they went on in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,
Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others,
Pitiful, floated in silence apart; on their knees lay the sea-boys
Whelmed by the roll of the surge, swept down by the anger of Nereus;
Hapless, whom never again upon quay or strand shall their mothers
Welcome with garlands and vows to the temples; but, wearily pining,
Gaze over island and main for the sails which return not; they, heedless,
Sleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids.
So they passed by in their joy, like a dream, on the murmuring ripple."
Such a rhapsody may be somewhat out of order, even in a popular scientific book; and yet one cannot help at moments envying the old Greek imagination, which could inform the soulless sea-world with a human life and beauty. For, after all, star-fishes and sea- anemones are dull substitutes for Sirens and Tritons; the lamps of the sea-nymphs, those glorious phosphorescent medusae whose beauty Mr. Gosse sets forth so well with pen and pencil, are not as attractive as the sea-nymphs themselves would be; and who would not, like Menelaus, take the grey old man of the sea himself asleep upon the rocks, rather than one of his seal-herd, probably too with the same result as the world-famous combat in the Antiquary, between Hector and Phoca? And yet - is there no human interest in these pursuits, more humanity and more divine, than there would be even in those Triton and Nereid dreams, if realized to sight and sense? Heaven forbid that those should say so, whose wanderings among rock and pool have been mixed up with holiest passages of friendship and of love, and the intercommunion of equal minds and sympathetic hearts, and the laugh of children drinking in health from every breeze and instruction at every step, running ever and anon with proud delight to add their little treasure to their parents' stock, and of happy friendly evenings spent over the microscope and the vase, in examining, arranging, preserving, noting down in the diary the wonders and the labours of the happy, busy day. No; such short glimpses of the water-world as our present appliances afford us are full enough of pleasure; and we will not envy Glaucus: we will not even be over-anxious for the success of his only modern imitator, the French naturalist who is reported to have fitted himself with a waterproof dress and breathing apparatus, in order to walk the bottom of the Mediterranean, and see for himself how the world goes on at the fifty-fathom line: we will be content with the wonders of the shore and of the sea-floor, as far as the dredge will discover them to us. We shall even thus find enough to occupy (if we choose) our lifetime. For we must recollect that this hasty sketch has hardly touched on that vegetable water-world, which is as wonderful and as various as the animal one. A hint or two of the beauty of the sea- weeds has been given; but space has allowed no more. Yet we might have spent our time with almost as much interest and profit, had we neglected utterly the animals which we have found, and devoted our attention exclusively to the flora of the rocks. Sea-weeds are no mere playthings for children; and to buy at a shop some thirty pretty kinds, pasted on paper, with long names (probably mis-spelt) written under each, is not by any means to possess a collection of them. Putting aside the number and the obscurity of their species, the questions which arise in studying their growth, reproduction, and organic chemistry are of the very deepest and most important in the whole range of science; and it will need but a little study of such a book as Harvey's "Algae," to show the wise man that he who has comprehended (which no man yet does) the mystery of a single spore or tissue-cell, has reached depths in the great "Science of Life" at which an Owen would still confess himself "blind by excess of light." "Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb?" asks the Jewish sage, sadly, half self-reprovingly, as he discovers that man is not the measure of all things, and that in much learning may be vanity and vexation of spirit, and in much study a weariness of the flesh; and all our deeper physical science only brings the same question more awfully near. "Vilior alga," more worthless than the very sea-weed, says the old Roman: and yet no torn scrap of that very sea-weed, which to-morrow may manure the nearest garden, but says to us, "Proud man! talking of spores and vesicles, if thou darest for a moment to fancy that to have seen spores and vesicles is to have seen me, or to know what I am, answer this. Knowest thou how the bones do grow in the womb? Knowest thou even how one of these tiny black dots, which thou callest spores, grow on my fronds?" And to that question what answer shall we make? We see tissues divide, cells develop, processes go on - but How and Why? These are but phenomena; but what are phenomena save effects? Causes, it may be, of other effects; but still effects of other causes. And why does the cause cause that effect? Why should it not cause something else? Why should it cause anything at all? Because it obeys a law. But why does it obey the law? and how does it obey the law? And, after all, what is a law? A mere custom of Nature. We see the same phenomenon happen a great many times; and we infer from thence that it has a custom of happening; and therefore we call it a law: but we have not seen the law; all we have seen is the phenomenon which we suppose to indicate the law. We have seen things fall: but we never saw a little flying thing pulling them down, with "gravitation" labelled on its back; and the question, why things fall, and HOW, is just where it was before Newton was born, and is likely to remain there. All we can say is, that Nature has her customs, and that other customs ensue, when those customs appear: but that as to what connects cause and effect, as to what is the reason, the final cause, or even the CAUSA CAUSANS, of any phenomenon, we know not more but less than ever; for those laws or customs which seem to us simplest ("endosmose," for instance, or "gravitation"), are just the most inexplicable, logically unexpected, seemingly arbitrary, certainly supernatural - miraculous, if you will; for no natural and physical cause whatsoever can be assigned for them; while if anyone shall argue against their being miraculous and supernatural on the ground of their being so common, I can only answer, that of all absurd and illogical arguments, this is the most so. For what has the number of times which the miracle occurs to do with the question, save to increase the wonder? Which is more strange, that an inexplicable and unfathomable thing should occur once and for all, or that it should occur a million times every day all the world over?
Let those, however, who are too proud to wonder, do as seems good to them. Their want of wonder will not help them toward the required explanation: and to them, as to us, as soon as we begin asking, "HOW?" and "WHY?" the mighty Mother will only reply with that magnificent smile of hers, most genial, but most silent, which she has worn since the foundation of all worlds; that silent smile which has tempted many a man to suspect her of irony, even of deceit and hatred of the human race; the silent smile which Solomon felt, and answered in "Ecclesiastes;" which Goethe felt, and did not answer in his "Faust;" which Pascal felt, and tried to answer in his "Thoughts," and fled from into self-torture and superstition, terrified beyond his powers of endurance, as he found out the true meaning of St. John's vision, and felt himself really standing on that fragile and slippery "sea of glass," and close beneath him the bottomless abyss of doubt, and the nether fires of moral retribution. He fled from Nature's silent smile, as that poor old King Edward (mis-called the Confessor) fled from her hymns of praise, in the old legend of Havering-atte-bower, when he cursed the nightingales because their songs confused him in his prayers: but the wise man need copy neither, and fear neither the silence nor the laughter of the mighty mother Earth, if he will be but wise, and hear her tell him, alike in both - "Why call me mother? Why ask me for knowledge which I cannot teach, peace which I cannot give or take away? I am only your foster-mother and your nurse - and I have not been an unkindly one. But you are God's children, and not mine. Ask Him. I can amuse you with my songs; but they are but a nurse's lullaby to the weary flesh. I can awe you with my silence; but my silence is only my just humility, and your gain. How dare I pretend to tell you secrets which He who made me knows alone? I am but inanimate matter; why ask of me things which belong to living spirit? In God I live and move, and have my being; I know not how, any more than you know. Who will tell you what life is, save He who is the Lord of life? And if He will not tell you, be sure it is because you need not to know. At least, why seek God in nature, the living among the dead? He is not here: He is risen."
He is not here: He is risen. Good reader, you will probably agree that to know that saying, is to know the key-note of the world to come. Believe me, to know it, and all it means, is to know the keynote of this world also, from the fall of dynasties and the fate of nations, to the sea-weed which rots upon the beach.
It may seem startling, possibly (though I hope not, for my readers' sake, irreverent), to go back at once after such thoughts, be they true or false, to the weeds upon the cliff above our heads. But He who is not here, but is risen, yet is here, and has appointed them their services in a wonderful order; and I wish that on some day, or on many days, when a quiet sea and offshore breezes have prevented any new objects from coming to land with the rising tide, you would investigate the flowers peculiar to our sea-rocks and sandhills. Even if you do not find the delicate lily-like Trichonema of the Channel Islands and Dawlish, or the almost as beautiful Squill of the Cornish cliffs, or the sea-lavender of North Devon, or any of those rare Mediterranean species which Mr. Johns has so charmingly described in his "Week at the Lizard Point," yet an average cliff, with its carpeting of pink thrift and of bladder catchfly, and Lady's finger, and elegant grasses, most of them peculiar to the sea marge, is often a very lovely flower- bed.
Not merely interesting, too, but brilliant in their vegetation are sandhills; and the seemingly desolate dykes and banks of salt marshes will yield many a curious plant, which you may neglect if you will: but lay to your account the having to repent your neglect hereafter, when, finding out too late what a pleasant study botany is, you search in vain for curious forms over which you trod every day in crossing flats which seemed to you utterly ugly and uninteresting, but which the good God was watching as carefully as He did the pleasant hills inland: perhaps even more carefully; for the uplands He has completed, and handed over to man, that he may dress and keep them: but the tide-flats below are still unfinished, dry land in the process of creation, to which every tide is adding the elements of fertility, which shall grow food, perhaps in some future state of our planet, for generations yet unborn.
But to return to the water-world, and to dredging; which of all sea-side pursuits is perhaps the most pleasant, combining as it does fine weather sailing with the discovery of new objects, to which, after all, the waifs and strays of the beach, whether "flotsom jetsom, or lagand," as the old Admiralty laws define them, are few and poor. I say particularly fine weather sailing; for a swell, which makes the dredge leap along the bottom, instead of scraping steadily, is as fatal to sport as it is to some people's comfort. But dredging, if you use a pleasure boat and the small naturalist's dredge, is an amusement in which ladies, if they will, may share, and which will increase, and not interfere with, the amusements of a water-party. _