behind the islands, which shelter them like a protecting reef. They drop
equally quickly, and thus it is not uncommon for the morning to be calm,
the midday raging in waves dashing resistlessly upon the beach, and the
evening still again. The Irish, who are accustomed to the salt ocean,
say, in the suddenness of its storms and the shifting winds, it is more
dangerous than the sea itself. But then there are almost always islands,
behind which a vessel can be sheltered.

Beneath the surface of the Lake there must be concealed very many
ancient towns and cities, of which the names are lost. Sometimes the
anchors bring up even now fragments of rusty iron and old metal, or
black beams of timber. It is said, and with probability, that when the
remnant of the ancients found the water gradually encroaching (for it
rose very slowly), as they were driven back year by year, they
considered that in time they would be all swept away and drowned. But
after extending to its present limits the Lake rose no farther, not even
in the wettest seasons, but always remains the same. From the position
of certain quays we know that it has thus remained for the last hundred
years at least.

Never, as I observed before, was there so beautiful an expanse of water.
How much must we sorrow that it has so often proved only the easiest
mode of bringing the miseries of war to the doors of the unoffending!
Yet men are never weary of sailing to and fro upon it, and most of the
cities of the present time are upon its shore. And in the evening we
walk by the beach, and from the rising grounds look over the waters, as
if to gaze upon their loveliness were reward to us for the labour of the
day.