68 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



we once more turn to the last spurs of chalk and the 

 isolated Needles. There, with eye quickened to re- 

 cognise what science has to reveal, we trace on every 

 feature of the rocky foreground, inscribed in characters 

 that cannot be mistaken, the story of that process of 

 destruction which has reduced the Isle of Wight to 

 its present diminished proportions. The rains, frosts, 

 and tempests splinter the chalk above and the waves 

 gnaw it away below. Year by year fresh slices are cut 

 off and strewn in fragments over the sea-floor by the 

 unwearying surge. The Needles, once part of the 

 down, are perceptibly less than they were a gene- 

 ration ago. The opposite white cliffs and downs of 

 Dorset were at one time continuous with those of the 

 Isle of Wight. They too, by their shattered precipices, 

 tunnelled caverns, and isolated stacks of rock, tell the 

 same tale of disintegration. And, thus, impressive 

 though the scenery was before, it now acquires a new 

 interest and significance, when every cliff and pinnacle 

 becomes eloquent to us of a past so strange, so remote, 

 and yet so closely linked with our own day by a chain 

 of slow and unbroken causation. 



And now, as a last illustration, let me conduct the 

 reader in imagination to the far north-west of Scotland 

 and place him on the craggy slopes above the upper 

 end of Loch Maree as the sun, after a day of autumnal 

 storm, is descending towards the distant Hebrides in 

 a glory of crimson, green, and gold. Hardly any- 

 where within the compass of our islands can a landscape 

 be beheld so varied in form and colour, so abounding 

 in all that is noblest and fairest in our mountain 

 scenery. To the right rises the huge mass of Slioch, 



