'Nature softening and concealing,
Is busy with a hand of healing'—
crusting the bare rock with golden lichen, or hiding its rawness under a cover of richly tinted weather-stains, we none the less perceive the sure signs of constant and inevitable decay; we recognise the working of the same forces that have sculptured the whole landscape, far as well as near; and we feel awed in presence of this revelation of the continuity of law and of the potency even of the unregarded operations of nature when they have had untold ages in which to accomplish their appointed work.
I should like now to transport the reader to a wholly different scene, that we may consider together some of the more obvious features in the landscapes of the south coast of England. At the western end of the Isle of Wight, a long ridge of chalk-down, which stretches completely across the island, runs out to sea, and terminates in the well-known white pinnacles of the Needles. From the highest part of the ridge, when the air is clear, the eye ranges southward over a vast expanse of open sea. To the west and north the breadth of water is bounded by the blue hills of Dorsetshire, the white cliffs of Swanage Bay, and then the long low brown heights which are crowned with the spires of Bournemouth and Christchurch. Eastward we note how the ridge on which we stand sinks down into the hollow of Freshwater Gap, but rises again on the farther side, and then striking inland for some miles, sweeps round to form the heights of St. Catharine's, nearly 800 feet high, whence it descends once more in white cliffs to the sea.
On a summer noon, when a fresh westerly breeze roughens the sea into deepest azure, and keeps a continual murmur of plashing waves at the foot of the cliffs, few pieces of English coast scenery offer more attractions than this. From the verge of the short green sward of the down, the chalk plunges in a sheer precipice of dazzling whiteness, that contrasts well with the mingled blue and emerald-green of the sea below. Projecting massive buttresses, that catch the full blaze of sunlight, throw into delicate violet shadow the recesses and alcoves into which the face of chalk has been worn. On the great ocean highway in front, vessels of every size and rig sail past on their outward or homeward voyage. Though our perch above the precipice is solitary, we yet feel within sight and touch of the living world. Across the bay we mark the smoke of distant villages and towns, and the fields and woodlands that separate the scattered hamlets. Just below, at the northern foot of the ridge, sheltered and concealed among its woods, lies that home so dear to lovers of English literature, where—
'Groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand,
And further on, the hoary channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.'
Nor are memorials of the past wanting to throw over the scene the priceless charm of old memory and tradition. The down is roughened here and there with 'the grassy barrows of the happier dead.' The steeples and towers of the country churches dotted over the landscape, mark still, as they have done for centuries, the heart of each parish and its quiet graveyard. It is a typically English scene, full of that hallowed, historic interest, and of that subdued, unobtrusive beauty, where the lineaments of nature are everywhere more or less concealed by the labours of man, which constitute so chief a source of pleasure in the landscapes of England.