14 FKESH FIELDS 



ing with wheat and barley, and with grass just 

 ready for the scythe, is cut squarely off by the sea ; 

 the plow and the reaper come to the very brink of 

 the chalky cliffs. As you sit down on Shake- 

 speare's Cliff, with your feet dangling in the air at 

 a height of three hundred and fifty feet, you can 

 reach back and pluck the grain heads and the scar- 

 let poppies. Never have I seen such quiet pastoral 

 beauty take such a sudden leap into space. Yet 

 the scene is tame in one sense: there is no hint of 

 the wild and the savage; the rock is soft and fri- 

 able, a kind of chalky bread, which the sea devours 

 readily; the hills are like freshly cut loaves; slice 

 after slice has been eaten away by the hungry ele- 

 ments. Sitting here, I saw no " crows and choughs " 

 winging "the midway air," but a species of hawk, 

 "haggards of the rocks," were disturbed in the 

 niches beneath me, and flew along from point to 

 point. 



" The murmuring surge, 

 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, 

 Cannot be heard so high." 



I had wondered why Shakespeare had made his 

 seashores pebbly instead of sandy, and now I saw 

 why: they are pebbly, with not a grain of sand to 

 be found. This chalk formation, as I have already 

 said, is full of flint nodules; and as the shore is 

 eaten away by the sea, these rounded masses remain. 

 They soon become worn into smooth pebbles, which 

 beneath the pounding of the surf give out a strange 

 clinking, rattling sound. Across the Channel, on 



