It is only to be seen thoroughly when looked down upon from the bold headland. Below, the hard necessity of toiling over the beach, the sand yielding, and the pebbles round, hard, and rolling, makes the task of traversing this narrow beach a real and violent gymnastic exercise. No; let us keep to the heights where splendid villas, noble woods, the waving harvests, the delicious gardens which even to the very edge of the great rocky wall, look down upon that magnificent channel which separates the two shores of the two great empires of the world. The land and the sea! What more! Both, here, have a great charm; nevertheless, he who loves the sea for her own sake, he who is her friend, her lover, will rather seek her in some less varied scene. To be really intimate with her, the great sandy beaches, provided, always, that they be not too soft, are far more convenient. They allow of such infinite strolls! They suffer us so well to build up our air castles, and to meditate upon so many things; they allow us to hold such familiar and deep conference with that never silent sea! Never do I complain of those vast and free arenas in which others find themselves so ill at ease. When there, I am never less lonely than when alone. I come, I go, I feel that ever present sea. It is there, ever there, the sublime companion; and if haply that companion be in gentle mood, I venture to speak, and the great companion does not disdain to speak to me again. How many things have we not said to each other in those quiet wastes, when the crowd is away, on the limitless sands of Scheveningen, Ostend, Royan, and Saint Georges. There it is that in long interviews we can establish some intimacy with the Sea, acquire some familiarity with its great speech. When from the towers of Amsterdam the Zuyderzee looks muddy, and when at the dykes of Scheveningen the leaden waves seem ready to overleap the earthy mound, the Sea wears its least pleasing aspect; yet I confess that this combat between land and water attracts me forcibly--this great invention, this mighty effort, this triumph of man's skill and man's labor, over the fiercest force of inanimate nature. And this sea also pleases me by the treasures of fecund life which I know to abound in its dark depths. It is one of the most populous in the world. On the night of St. John, when the fishery opens, you may see another sea arise from the depths--the Sea of Herrings. You will imagine that the boundless plain of waters will prove too limited for this great living upburst, this triumphant revelation of the boundless fecundity of Nature. Such was my first impression of this sea, and when I saw the pictures in which genius has so well marked its profound character, Ruysdaël's gloomy _Estacade_ beyond any other painting in the Louvre has always irresistibly attracted me. Why? In the ruddy tints of those phosphorescent waters, I feel not the cold of the North Sea, but the fermentation, the stream, the rushing energy of life.