over their heads. "Will the time ever come," I thought, "when man shall
be able to store up even this force for his own ends? Who can tell?" The
solitary form of a man stood at some distance gazing, as I was gazing, out
on the ocean. I walked towards him, thinking with myself who it could be
that loved Nature so well that he did not shrink from her even in her most
uncompanionable moods. I suspected, and soon found I was right; it was
Percivale.

"What a clashing of water-drops!" I said, thinking of a line somewhere in
Coleridge's Remorse. They are but water-drops, after all, that make this
great noise upon the rocks; only there is a great many of them."

"Yes," said Percivale. "But look out yonder. You see a single sail,
close-reefed--that is all I can see--away in the mist there? As soon as you
think of the human struggle with the elements, as soon as you know that
hearts are in the midst of it, it is a clashing of water-drops no more. It
is an awful power, with which the will and all that it rules have to fight
for the mastery, or at least for freedom."

"Surely you are right. It is the presence of thought, feeling, effort that
gives the majesty to everything. It is even a dim attribution of human
feelings to this tormented, passionate sea that gives it much of its awe;
although, as we were saying the other day, it is only _a picture_ of the
troubled mind. But as I have now seen how matters are with the elements,
and have had a good pluvial bath as well, I think I will go home and change
my clothes."

"I have hardly had enough of it yet," returned Percivale. "I shall have a
stroll along the heights here, and when the tide has fallen a little way
from the foot of the cliffs I shall go down on the sands and watch awhile