for sea, the German _Meer_, Old English _Mere_, means death
or destruction; and the destructive action of the ocean's
untutored elementary force found personifications in the
Teutonic Oegir (Terror), with his dreaded daughter, and the
sea-goddess, Ran, his wife, who raged in storms and overwhelmed
the ships. The eastern peoples, including the Hebrews, regarded
the sea as the abode of evil powers, as certain of the visions in
the Book of Daniel strikingly testify. Nor is this feeling of the
action of hostile powers yet extinct. Victor Hugo makes fine use
of it in his description of the storm in "The Toilers of the Sea."

Jefferies was always deeply affected by the vast-ness and
strength of the sea. "Let me launch forth" (he writes) "and sail
over the rim of the sea yonder, and when another rim rises over
that, and again onwards into an ever-widening ocean of idea and
life. For with all the strength of the wave, and its succeeding
wave, the depth and race of the tide, the clear definition of the
sky; with all the subtle power of the great sea, there rises the
equal desire. Give me life strong and full as the brimming
ocean; give me thoughts wide as its plain. . . . My soul rising to
the immensity utters its desire-prayer with all the strength of the
sea."

In many of its aspects, the ocean can stimulate and soften
moods of sadness. The peculiar potency of the play of the
waves is reserved for the next chapter. But the more general
influences of this character are many and of undoubted
significance. The vast loneliness of its watery, restless plains;
its unchangeableness; its seeming disregard for human destinies;
the secrets buried under its heaving waters--these and a