32 FEBRUARY. 



down below the cliff to a grassy plateau at its foot. I 

 scramble down, and sit on a stony shelf, overhung with 

 sheets of ivy, and mark the bright green tufts of Sea- 

 spleenwort springing out of the clefts, unfortunately too 

 high to be reached. 



The eye roams northward. At foot a rough broken 

 ground slopes steeply down, shaggy with thickets of 

 brake and bramble, and of furze which glows even now 

 with golden blossom, varied with great tracts of broken 

 fragments of limestone, blackened by the weather. At 

 length this merges into a broad beach of shingle, snowy 

 white, on which I see ladies reclining, with books and 

 parasols, as if 'twere July instead of February. The sea 

 bounds the beach with a line of still whiter Surf, ever 

 renewing itself as it breaks, with a sweet whispering 

 sound. At the back is a series of most picturesque 

 cliffs of the reddest sandstone, on the top of which I 

 find in June the beautiful blossoms of the Purple 

 Gromwell, one of the rarest of British flowers. The 

 ground at the summit is very uneven; and so my 

 eye rests on the broad opposite slopes of Woodleigh 

 Vale, chequered with fields and hedgerows, among 

 which the ploughmen are busy, and the teams are 

 toiling up the steep furrows. 



The formation suddenly changes again, and the lime- 

 stone is seen in the fine rounded projection of Petit 



