14 FRESH 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 



