There is something, to my fancy, quite perfect in
this little experience of my fellow-traveller's. The ways of men
seem always very trivial to us when we find ourselves alone on a
church-top, with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles, and see far
below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses, and the silent
activity of the city streets; but how much more must they not have
seemed so to him as he stood, not only above other men's business,
but above other men's climate, in a golden zone like Apollo's!
This was the sort of pleasure I found in the country of which I
write. The pleasure was to be out of the wind, and to keep it in
memory all the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter. And it was
only by the sea that any such sheltered places were to be found.
Between the black worm-eaten head-lands there are little bights and
havens, well screened from the wind and the commotion of the external
sea, where the sand and weeds look up into the gazer's face from a
depth of tranquil water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flickering
from the ruined crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine.
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