EDEN PHILLPOTTS 43 



The Cliffs of Devon o -Qy ^^ 



(From My Devon Year) 



XJO county is richer in splendour of great preci- 

 pices looking out upon broad and narrow 

 seas than this our Devon ; but though the southern 

 cliffs lack that awful austerity and abiding gloom 

 of the northern crags, though their pinnacles and 

 serrated edges and escarpments are but pigmies in 

 altitude when compared with the huge foreheads 

 that frown upon the Atlantic from Welcombe to 

 the Foreland, yet Nature has compensated their 

 shortcomings of size, and bestowed upon them 

 a beauty and an infinite variety of colour and 

 form not met with where the great ocean waves 

 break and thunder at their journey's end. There, 

 even though the sea has slept for many summer 

 days, and sinks and rises with peace as profound 

 and suggestive as the slumber of a giant, the 

 accustomed striving and unrest are reflected in 

 the dark precipices above it, in the tremendous 

 acclivities and the prevalent geological formation 

 of huge and gloomy planes that suck up direct 

 sunshine, as a sponge soaks liquid, ami are 

 nothing brightened. They stare, these huge cliff- 

 faces, with blind eyes into the West ; they call for 

 sad human hearts to chime with their sobriety ; 

 they breathe of ceaseless war, of agonized battle 

 with the West wind and all its unnumbered hosts 



