dunes, and at all hours of the day certain carriages which look like
gypsy caravans, drawn by strong horses, are driven from the shore into
the sea, where they turn round. Whereupon ladies step out from them
and bathe in the water, letting their fair hair blow about in the
wind. At night the band plays, the visitors walk out, and the beach
is enlivened by an elegant, festive, ever-changing crowd, in which
every language is heard and the beauty of every country is
represented. A few steps distant from this gayety the misanthrope can
find solitude and seclusion on the dunes, where the music faintly
strikes his ear like a far-off echo, and the houses of the fishermen
show him their lights, directing his thoughts to domestic life and
peace.

The first time I went to Scheveningen I took a walk on those dunes
which have been so often painted by artists, the only heights on the
immense Dutch plain that intercept the view--rebellious children of
the sea, whose progress they oppose, being at the same time the
prisoners and the guardsmen of Holland. There are three tiers of these
dunes, forming a triple bulwark against the ocean: the outer is the
most barren, the centre the highest, and the inner the most
cultivated. The medium height of these mountains of sand is not
greater than fifteen metres, and all together they do not extend into
the land for more than a French league. But as there are no higher
elevations near or remote, they produce the false impression of a vast
mountainous region. The eye sees valleys, gorges, precipices, views
that appear distant and are close at hand--the tops of neighboring
dunes on which we imagine a man ought to appear as large as a child,
and on which instead he seems a giant. Viewed from a height, this
region looks like a yellow sea, tempestuous yet motionless. The
dreariness of this desert is increased by a wild vegetation, which
seems like the mourning of the dead and abandoned nature--thin,
fragile grass, flowers with almost transparent petals, juniper,
sweet-broom, rosemary, through which every now and then skips a
rabbit. Neither house, tree, nor human being is to be seen for miles.
Now and then ravens, curlews, and sea-gulls fly past. Their cries and
the rustling of the shrubs in the wind are the only sounds that break
the silence of the solitude. When the sky is black the dead color of
the earth assumes a sinister hue, like the fantastic light in which
objects appear when seen through c