"
We will pass on. We have had enough of horrors. And, beside, we are
longing to hurry onward; for we are nearing the Mediterranean now.
There are small skiffs lying under the dark tower of Agde, another
place of blood, fitly built of black lava blocks, the offspring of
the nether pit. The railway cuts through rolling banks of dark lava;
and now, ahead of us, is the conical lava-hill of Cette, and the
mouth of the Canal du Midi.
There it is, at last. The long line of heavenly blue; and over it,
far away, the white-peaked lateen sails, which we have seen in
pictures since our childhood; and there, close to the rail, beyond
the sand-hills, delicate wavelets are breaking for ever on a yellow
beach, each in exactly the same place as the one which fell before.
One glance shows us children of the Atlantic, that we are on a
tideless sea.
There it is,--the sacred sea. The sea of all civilization, and
almost all history, girdled by the fairest countries in the world;
set there that human beings from all its shores might mingle with
each other, and become humane--the sea of Egypt, of Palestine, of
Greece, of Italy, of Byzant, of Marseilles, and this Narbonnaise,
'more Roman than Rome herself,' to which we owe the greater part of
our own progress; the sea, too, Algeria and Carthage, and Cyrene, and
fair lands now desolate, surely not to be desolate for ever;--the sea
of civilization.
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