Towns > Helensburgh > 1875 - Battrum's guide and directory to Helensburgh and neighbourhood

50 HELENSBURGH GUIDE.
on eacli side present. With a breeze blowing freshly down
the loch, or upwards, the tide on the one hand is fretting
and angrily lashing against the opposing barrier, the waves
raking down, with each returning grasp, the loose sand and
pebbles, only to dash them back again on the shore. On
the other hand, not a breath disturbs the placid surface ; the
leaves of the ebbed sea-gresses and tangle float listlessly on
the surface, and the medusa stretches out its hundred fibrous
threads in quest of its minute prey, and the water-spider
skims to and fro on its glittering pathway. How narrow
and how frail the boundary between the bitter, bleak shore
of wordly trial and adversity, and the calm rest of peaceful
life ! To what slight interposition, which, men meaninglessly
term chance, are we often preserved from the storm, and our
bark rides safely in tranquil and untroubled waters ! And
as one stands on this point and watches the fishing crafts on
the lake beyond, he cannot fail to feel a measure of sympathy
and interest in the humble lives of those who earn a liveli-
hood from the treacherous deep; the poetry and peril of
which have formed an exhaustless theme of past and present
literature. The fisherman's boat itself, under the eloquent
pen of Mr. Ruskin, becomes a very poem. How graphic
and how true the description involuntarily rising before us
as we write — "All ashine with the sea she plunges and dips
into the deep green purity of the mounded waves more joy-
fully than a deer lies down among the grass of spring, the
soft white cloud of foam opening momentarily at the bows,
or fading and flying high into the breeze where the sea-gulls
toss and shriek ; the joy and beauty of it all the while so
mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and the
human efibrt andi sorrow going on from age to age — waves
rolling for ever, and winds moaning for ever, and faithful