Howitt, in speaking of the Longstone Island, says--"It was like the rest of these desolate isles, all of dark whinstone, cracked in every direction, and worn with the action of winds, waves, and tempests, since the world began. On the greatest part of it there was not a blade of grass, nor a grain of earth, but bare and iron-like stones, crusted round the coast, as far as high-water mark, with limpit, and still smaller shells. We ascended wrinkled hills of black stone, and descended into worn and dismal dells of the same--into some of which, where the tide got entrance, it came pouring and roaring in raging whiteness, and churning the loose fragments of the whinstone into round pebbles, and piled them up into deep crevices with sea-weeds, like great round ropes and heaps of fucus. Over our heads screamed hundreds of birds, the gull mingling his laughter most wildly." But the wild scream of the sea-fowl, and the thunder of the surf, were such common things to the little Darlings that they took but small notice of them. Grace, indeed, having them mingled with her mother's cradle-song, would scarcely like to have missed the familiar sounds, since they had lulled her to sleep at night, and awoke her in the dawn. When it was time for her to begin her education, her father found the task of teaching her an easy and a pleasant one; for Grace was quick and intelligent. Moreover, she had that first and highest qualification of a good scholar--the love of learning. It was no difficulty to get her to bend all her powers to the pursuit of knowledge, for she could not help doing so, the thoroughness that she had inherited from her father urging her to overcome obstacles, and to make herself perfect wherever perfection was within her reach.