MARBLE CLIFFS 



O county is richer in splendour of great pre- 

 cipices 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 fore- 

 heads 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, and 

 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 ; 



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