It was not
very poetic bliss, perhaps; but nevertheless it is a fact that the
cleanness of the sea and the sea air was as attractive to us as any
of the sea attributes. We had a wonderful time. Only in the country
is it possible to note the change of morning into mid-day, of mid-day
into afternoon, and of afternoon into evening; and it is only in the
country, therefore, that a day seems stretched out into its proper
length. We had brought all our food with us, and sat upon the shore
in the shadow of a piece of the cliff. A row of heavy white clouds
lay along the horizon almost unchangeable and immovable, with their
summit-lines and the part of the mass just below them steeped in
sunlight. The level opaline water differed only from a floor by a
scarcely perceptible heaving motion, which broke into the faintest of
ripples at our feet. So still was the great ocean, so quietly did
everything lie in it, that the wavelets which licked the beach were
as pure and bright as if they were a part of the mid-ocean depths.
About a mile from us, at one o'clock, a long row of porpoises
appeared, showing themselves in graceful curves for half-an-hour or
so, till they went out farther to sea off Fairlight.
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