It happened, on occasion of an exceptionally low tide, that some
remarkable relics were exposed to view on the coast of the island of
Vleeland. A countryman's waggon overtaken [94] by the tide, as he
returned with merchandise from the shore! you might have supposed,
but for a touch of grace in the construction of the thing--lightly
wrought timber-work, united and adorned by a multitude of brass
fastenings, like the work of children for their simplicity, while the
rude, stiff chair, or throne, set upon it, seemed to distinguish it
as a chariot of state.
To some antiquarians it told the story of the overwhelming of one of
the chiefs of the old primeval people of Holland, amid all his gala
array, in a great storm. But it was another view which Sebastian
preferred; that this object was sepulchral, namely, in its motive--
the one surviving relic of a grand burial, in the ancient manner, of
a king or hero, whose very tomb was wasted away.--Sunt metis metae!
There came with it the odd fancy that he himself would like to have
been dead and gone as long ago, with a kind of envy of those whose
deceasing was so long since over.
On more peaceful days he would ponder Pliny's account of those
primeval forefathers, but without Pliny's contempt for them. A
cloyed Roman might despise their humble existence, fixed by necessity
from age to age, and with no desire of change, as "the ocean poured
in its flood twice a day, making it uncertain whether the country was
a part of the continent or of the sea.
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