JANE AUSTEN AT LYME 233 



its green chasms between romantic rocks/' which Jane 

 Austen compares to " the resembling scenes of the 

 far-famed Isle of Wight/' is even more " lovely and 

 wonderful " than when she saw it. Thirty-five years 

 after her September visit a further landslip occurred, 

 which produced a scene perhaps without parallel in 

 the British Isles. It took place on Christmas Day, 

 1839, when over forty acres of cultivated land slowly 

 and silently slipped away to a far lower level. Two 

 cottages were removed, and deposited with shattered 

 walls at a considerable distance below the cliffs, while 

 an orchard, which still continues to bear fruit, was 

 transplanted as it stood. The whole landslip is now 

 green with vegetation, and the scene from below, sixty 

 years after the disturbance, is most striking. High 

 above, the white chalk-cliffs stand out in turrets and 

 pinnacles. All around are irregular mounds and 

 chasms covered with herbage and brushwood. Chaos 

 is clothed with verdure. Vegetation runs riot among 

 the broken hillocks. Thickets of briar and clematis 

 form impenetrable jungles about the growing trees. 

 The stinking Iris, with its shining sword-shaped leaves 

 and knobs of scarlet berries, covers the more open 

 spaces of the UnderclifF, which in summer are one 

 blaze of brilliant blue, with the blossoms of the viper's 

 bugloss. Here and there, even in late September, the 

 perfoliate chlora opens its orange-yellow petals to the 

 sun, while all along the Pinny landslip the hound's- 

 tongue is unusually abundant. You cannot mistake 

 this stout and curious plant. Its large, soft, downy 

 leaves and lurid-purple flowers are striking ; its seed- 

 vessels, covered with barbed prickles, will stick to 

 your clothes like burs, and the whole plant smells 

 strongly of mice. The old herbalists fancied that " it 



