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.

She soon learned to read, and then a new world opened to her. Little
it matters to the reader whether he sits on the rock where the
sea-waves wash up to his feet, or reclines upon a velvet coach, with
all the appurtenances of luxury round about him. He lives in other
places and other times. He fights in the battles that have long ago
been ended. He climbs mountains that his eyes have never seen. He
sails over seas where the lights flash, and the scents of fragrant
islands come sweetly over him. In fact, if he be a passionate and
imaginative reader, he loses his life in that of his author, and is
filled with exquisite pleasure. Such a reader was Grace Darling. She
was not able to procure many books, for their library, though good, was
small, but those which were in her power she "read, marked, learned,
and inwardly digested." She had a retentive mem