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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

Another set of walks may, perhaps, appeal to more general sympathy. The voice of the sea, we know, is as powerful as the voice of the mountains; and, to my taste, it is difficult to say whether the Land's End is not in itself a more impressive station than the top of Mont Blanc. The solitude of the frozen peaks suggests tombstones and death. The sea is always alive and at work. The hovering gulls and plunging gannets and the rollicking porpoises are animating symbols of a gallant struggle with wind and wave. Even the unassociative mind has a vague sense of the Armada and Hakluyt's heroes in the background. America and Australia are just over the way. 'Is not this a dull place?' asked some one of an old woman whose cottage was near to the Lizard lighthouse. 'No,' she replied, 'it is so "cosmopolitan."': That was a simple-minded way of expressing the charm suggested in Milton's wonderful phrase—

Where the great Vision of the guarded Mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold.

She could mentally follow the great ships coming and going, and shake hands with people at the ends of the earth. The very sight of a fishing-