fiercest of the strife was on this side where the sea broke on the ragged, yet sharply pointed rocks, as they rose boldly above, and ran out far beneath the waves, in long, shelving, reefs. The eye, as well as the ear was vexed, for a blinding snow was falling, its dazzling whiteness heightened by contrast with the dark waves into which it fell. On the whole, I felt that the Sea had less to do than the land in rendering the scene terrible; it is exactly the contrary on the Ocean. CHAPTER VIII. THE STORM OF OCTOBER, 1859. The storm, which of all storms, I had the best opportunity of observing, was that which swept in fury over the west of France, from the 24th of October 1859, to the 31st of the same month, the implacable and indefatigable storm, which, with but few and very short intervals, raged furiously for six days and six nights, and strewed our whole western coasts with wrecks. Both before and after that storm, the barometer indicated great disturbances, and the telegraphic communications were cut off by the breaking of the wires, or the magnetic falsifications. Very hot seasons had preceded this tempest, but it brought us a succession of very different weather; rainy, and cold. Even 1860, up to the very day on which I write these lines, is marked by heavy rain storms, and cold winds from the west, and south, which seem to bring us all the rains of the Atlantic, and of the great South Sea. I watched this tempest from a spot so smiling and peaceful that tempest was the last thing that one would anticipate there. I speak of the little port of Saint George, near Royan, just at the entrance of the Gironde. I had passed an exceedingly quiet five months there, meditating what I should say on the subject which I had treated upon in 1859; that subject at once so serious and so delicate. The place and the book are alike filled with memories very agreeable to me. Could I have written that book in any other place? I know not; but one thing is quite certain: the wild perfume of that country; its aspect, at once staid and gentle, and the vivifying odors of its Brooms, that pungent and agreeable shrub of the Landes, had much to do with that book, and will ever be associated with it in my thought.