bowl-like hollow which received and brought up to me the faint
sound of the summer waves. Yonder lay the immense plain of
the sea, the palest green under the continued sunshine, as
though the heat had evaporated the colour from it; there was no
distinct horizon, a heat-mist inclosed it, and looked farther away
than the horizon would have done."

In each of these seascapes, the same essential features find a
place--the calm expanse without any defined boundary--the
silence--the play of delicate colour--the suggestions of rest after
toil, of peace after storm--and chiefest of all, the strangely
moving contrast of power and gentleness, the suggestion of
hidden strength. Doubtless we have in these the secret of much
of the mystic influence of the mighty ocean in its serenest
moods; doubtless we have in these the manifestations of
immanent ideas which have subtle power to subdue the human
soul to pensive thought and unwonted restfulness.

Not unlike them in general character and function, save for the
element of vastness, are the influences immanent in the calm of
evening or night landscapes. Goethe has an exquisite fragment
which is a fitting pendent to his Meeresstille:

Ueber alien Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde