THE GOODWIN SANDS. 9 
the ocean as much surpasses all conception, as the number of 
their inhabitants, or of the sands that line their shores. 
The boundaries of the ocean are not invariable; while mn 
some parts it encroaches upon the land, in others it retreats 
from the expanding coast. In many places we find the sea 
perpetually gnawing and undermining cliffs and rocks; and 
Torso Rock, near Point Deas Thomson, in the Arctic Ocean. 
sometimes swelling with sudden rage, it devours a broad expanse 
of plain, and changes fertile meads into a dreary waste of 
waters. The Goodwin Sands, notorious for the loss of many a 
noble vessel, were once a large tract of low ground belonging to 
Earl Goodwin, father of Harold, the last of our Saxon kings; and 
being afterwards enjoyed by the monastery of St. Augustine at 
Canterbury, the whole surface was drowned by the abbot’s 
neglect to repair the wall which defended it from the sea. In 
spite of the endeavours of the Dutch to protect their flat land 
by dykes against the inundatory waters, the storm-flood has 
more than once burst through these artificial boundaries, and 
converted large districts into inland seas. 
But the spaces which in this manner the dry land has gra- 
dually or suddenly lost, or still loses, to the chafing ocean are 
largely compensated for in other places, by the vast accumulations 
