St. Brelade's Bay, nearly two miles across, if we measure from Le Fret to La Moye Point, is perhaps the most gracious on the Jersey coast. The church has a very picturesque outline, with a saddle-backed tower like that of St. Sampson's, in Guernsey. It was admirably restored a few years ago, when the plaster was stripped from the vaulted roof that is common to most old churches in the Channel Islands, and is probably analogous to the vaulted roofs of the fortified churches of Pembrokeshire. Mr. Bicknell, however, is wrong in saying that "the interior walls ... look very dignified in their original condition." Nothing is more certain than that medieval churches—at any rate in cases where the walls are of rubble masonry—were plastered, and commonly covered with wall-paintings. Such plastering and old wall-painting may still be found at St. Brelade's in the Chapelle ès Pécheurs, or Fishermen's Chapel, that remains in the parish churchyard. These, according to Mr. Keyser, represent parts of two Dooms or Final Judgments, Our Lord before Herod, an Annunciation, the Assumption of the Virgin, and the Offering of the Magi. They probably date from the fifteenth century, and the attendant makes them visible by the simple expedient of throwing the light on them with a mirror. The existence of this old chapel side by side with the parish church—the same thing seems formerly to have happened at Grouville—is a subject of curious inquiry. Chantrey chapels were sometimes built in churchyards—there is still a fourteenth-century example at Carew, in Pembrokeshire, and there was formerly one at Newdigate, in Surrey—but these would be generally of later date; whereas the Fishermen's Chapel is supposed to date from quite the beginning of the twelfth century. In the grounds of the St. Brelade's Hotel is an ancient cross of the kind that is stated by Mr. Bicknell formerly to have "stood at nearly every place where four cross roads met in the island."
THE NEEDLE ROCK, GRÈVE AU LANÇON, JERSEY.
The walk across the south coast of Jersey, from Mont Orgueil to the Corbière, taking the train for the four dull miles, where there is nothing to see, between St. Helier and St. Aubin, will probably almost exhaust, except for the archæologist of the Dry-as-Dust school, the artificial attractions of the island of Jersey. Of course, there are other antiquities to see: St. Ouen's Manor, for example, now recently restored, and the ancient house of the Carterets; the cromlechs at Gorey and the Coupéron; and the seven old churches that we have not yet visited. But when we have seen the wall-paintings at St. Brelade's and St. Clement's; have inspected Elizabeth Castle, and the curious font at Prince's Tower; and, above all, have made every stick and stone of Mont Orgueil our own treasured possession, it will be time for most of us to turn our attention, less to the artificial attractions of Jersey, than to its wonderful natural beauties. It is lucky that these lie mostly on the north coast, which is well out of reach of St. Helier. It would be sad indeed if this silent succession of bays, stretching in stern sublimity from Grosnez Point to the long useless breakwater on the south of Fliquet Bay, were infested with tea-gardens, and boarding-houses, and villas. For this twelve miles of coast is both wholly unspoilt, and one of the loveliest imaginable. Brakes, no doubt, in the season, with their hordes of jolly trippers, invade for a few hours the sacred silences of Grève de Lecq and Rozel Bay. These, however, are limited to definite times and places; nor will it be hard for the quiet lover of Nature to evade their unwelcome gaieties. Every inch of this glorious stretch of coast should be walked over, if possible; should often be revisited; and should be lingered over lovingly. Where else have these rose-red cliffs a counterpart, jutting out into the bluest, or most emerald, of seas, and haunted by myriads of clanging sea-fowl, unless it be on the borders of lost Lyonesse? Waters that rest on a granite bed are always of amazing translucency—
Pleased to watch the waters sleep,
Round Iona green and deep—
and those that never rest round the igneous cliffs of Jersey are no exception to this beautiful rule. Here and there, of course, the explorer will come across some special point of interest, though the coast, to be enjoyed at its best, must always be enjoyed as a whole. At Grève de Lecq is a cave to visit which thoroughly entails some very rough scrambling, and some rather giddy climbing up an almost vertical cliff. Less than two miles to the east, as the crow flies—it adds to the distance enormously to follow all the sinuosities of this deeply indented coast—is the Creux-du-Vis, or Devil's Hole—one of those strange, roofless caverns, connecting with the sea by a tunnel through which the tide ebbs and flows, but set back some little distance from the margin of the cliff, that are found again in Sark, in the Creux Derrible and Pot. In many respects they resemble the famous "pot-holes" that occur in the mountain limestone of the Craven district in North-West Yorkshire, though their origin, it is clear, is wholly different. Creux, of course, is connected with the French creuser, to dig; and "derrible," which has nothing whatever to do with "terrible," is an old Norman word, unknown to modern French, that really expresses the same idea: "Cavité d'un rocher formée par un éboulement de terre, attenant à un précipice." "Creux" is used again of artificial cromlechs. East of the Creux-du-Vis is the Mouriers Waterfall, where a little stream leaps down the rocks into the sea. The path along the cliff is rather giddy, and those who take it must remember that a slip may be followed by fatal consequences, like the accident that happened to Mrs. Guille, in 1871, at the Gouffre, in Guernsey. The steep grass slopes in spring are plentifully sprinkled with the dainty yellow blossoms of the little wild narcissus. Beyond Sorel Point comes suddenly the deep hollow of La Houle, guarded by granite cliffs of sheer sublimity; and beyond this, in long succession, round innumerable intervening points, come Mourier, and Bonne Nuit, and Giffard, and Bouley, and Rozel, and Fliquet Bays. A week may well be spent, and more than a week, in leisurely exploration of this gloriously broken coast. Or the visitor who has less energy, or is weary of much scrambling, may sit here day after day in the sunshine, on promontory or cliff, watching the "blind wave" at its never-ending business of "feeling round its ocean hall." There are less pleasant ways than this of spending a summer holiday for those whose brains are fagged by weeks of dull work in London. And always across the water, far-seen on the dim horizon, are the faint grey lines of the Cotentin, and the cliffs of fairy-like Sark.
