sentinel row of osiers, syringas, and laburnums. This was the guard of
the cliffs. On the other side was the high garden wall, over which we
caught dissolving views of dormer-windows, of gabled roofs, vine-clad
walls, and a maze of peach and pear blossoms. This was not precisely
the kind of lane through which one hurried. One needed neither to be
sixteen nor even in love to find it a delectable path, very agreeable
to the eye, very suggestive to the imaginative faculty, exceedingly
satisfactory to the most fastidious of all the senses, to that
aristocrat of all the five, the sense of smell. Like all entirely
perfect experiences in life, the lane ended almost as soon as it began;
it ended in a steep pair of steps that dropped, precipitously, on the
pebbles of the beach.

For some reason best known to the day and the view, we all, with one
accord, proceeded to seat ourselves on the topmost step of this
stairway. We were waiting for the tide to fall, to go out to the
mussel-bed. Meanwhile the prospect to be seen from this improvised seat
was one made to be looked at. There is a certain innate compelling
quality in all great beauty. When nature or woman presents a really
grandiose appearance, they are singularly reposeful, if you notice;
they have the calm which comes with a consciousness of splendor. It
is only prettiness which is tormented with the itching for display; and
therefore this prospect, which rolled itself out beneath our feet,
curling in a half-moon of beach, broadening into meadows that dropped
to the river edge, lifting its beauty upward till the hills met the
sky. and the river was lost in the clasp of the shore--this aspect of
nature, in this moment of beauty, was as untroubled as if Chateaubriand
had not found her a lover, and had flattered man by persuading him that,

"La voix de l'univers, c'est mon intelligence."