ather than light, and loves the yearnings and
contentions of our soul more than its summer gladness and peace. Even
the olives here tell more to us of Olivet and the Garden than of the
oil-press and the wrestling-ground. The lilies carry us to the Sermon
on the Mount, and teach humility, instead of summoning up some legend
of a god's love for a mortal. The hillside tanks and running streams,
and water-brooks swollen by sudden rain, speak of Palestine. We call
the white flowers stars of Bethlehem. The large sceptre-reed; the
fig-tree, lingering in barrenness when other trees are full of fruit;
the locust-beans of the Caruba:--for one suggestion of Greek idylls
there is yet another, of far deeper, dearer power.

But who can resist the influence of Greek ideas at the Cap S. Martin?
Down to the verge of the sea stretch the tall, twisted stems of Levant
pines, and on the caverned limestone breaks the deep blue water.
Dazzling as marble are these rocks, pointed and honeycombed with
constant dashing of the restless sea, tufted with corallines and grey
and purple seaweeds in the little pools, but hard and dry and rough
above tide level. Nor does the sea always lap them quietly; for the
last few days it has come tumbling in, roaring and raging on the beach
with huge waves crystalline in their transparency, and maned with
fleecy spray. Such were the rocks and such the swell of breakers when
Ulysses grasped the shore after his long swim. Samphire, very salt and
fragrant, grows in the rocky honeycomb; then lentisk and beach-loving
myrtle, both exceeding green and bushy; then rosemary and euphorbia
above the reach of spray. Fishermen, with their long reeds, sit lazily
perched upon black rocks above blue waves, sunning themselves as much
as seeking sport. One distant tip of snow, seen far away behind the
hills, reminds us of an alien, unremembered winter. While dreaming
there, this fancy came into my head: Polyphemus was born yonder in
the Gorbio Valley. There he fed his sheep and goats, and on the hills
found scanty pasture for his kine. He and his mother lived in the
white house by the cypress near the stream where tulips grow. Young
Galatea, nursed in the caverns of these rocks, white as the foam, and
shy as the sea fishes, came one morning up the valley to pick mountain
hyacinths, and little Polyphemus led the way. He knew where violets
and sweet narcissus grew, as well as Galatea where pink coralline
and spreading sea-flowers wi