CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY. 177 



planted with elms and other trees, which, whatever 

 may he thought of their utility in husbandry, do 

 certainly improve the landscape wonderfully, affording 

 the finest contrasts between their dark masses of 

 foliage, and the tender green of the fields, as bright 

 as an emerald in the sunlight, seen in peeps between 

 them. A few farms and villas, embowered in orchards 

 and gardens, constitute the hamlet of Lee, and being 

 scattered over the bottom and along the slopes are 

 very picturesque. The valley rises a little inward, 

 and is presently lost to view by bending round to the 

 right, where it is shut in by the steep rounded hill 

 that forms that side. The whole of this hill, from its 

 base to its lofty summit, is covered with wood, wliile 

 the hill on the opposite side, equally lofty and equally 

 steep, is an open down, varied only by a few scattered 

 clumps of furze. A little stream turns the huge wheel 

 of a mill at high-water mark ; then spreads itself over 

 the sand and shingle in broad shallow sheets rather 

 than channels, till it finds the receded tide. The 

 character of the rocks is rather peculiar : around 

 on either side of the cove there are the same sharp 

 rugged upslanting ridges and pinnacles as elsewhere, 

 and some pretty little deep nooks are formed in the 

 high rocks on the western side, enclosing sloping 

 beaches of sand, entirely dry at low water but covered 

 by the flood-tide. The whole lower part of the cove 

 itself, however, that is, all between tide-marks, consists 

 of the usual rocks, grey friable slate, cut off as it were 

 to one level, about three or four feet above the shingle, 

 and these intersected by a thousand irregular channels, 

 and now and then interrupted by broad areas of sand 



