30 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA. 



gradual, it excites only local attention." On the same coast, 

 the ancient villages of Shipden, Wimpwell, and Eccles have 

 disappeared, several manors and large portions of neighbour- 

 ing parishes having gradually been swallowed up; nor has 

 there been any intermission, from time immemorial, in the 

 ravages of the sea along a line of coast twenty miles in 

 length in which these places stood. Dunwich, once the most 

 considerable seaport on the coast of Suffolk, is now but a 

 small village with about one hundred inhabitants. From the 

 time of Edward the Confessor, the ocean has devoured, piece 

 after piece, a monastery, seven churches, the high road, the 

 town-hall, the gaol, and many other buildings. In the sixteenth 

 century not one-fourth of the ancient town was left standing, 

 yet, the inhabitants retreating inland, the name has been pre- 

 served, — 



"Stat magni Dominis umbra," — 



as has been the case with many other ports, when their ancient 

 site has been blotted out. 



The Isle of Sheppey is subject to such rapid decay, that the 

 church at Minster, now near the coast, is said to have been in 

 the middle of the island fifty years ago, and it has been con- 

 jectured that at the present rate of destruction, the whole isle 

 will be annihilated before the end of the century. 



Another remarkable instance of the destructive action of 

 the tidal surge is that of Eeculver, on the Kentish coast, an 

 important military station in the time of the Eomans, now 

 nothing but a ruin and a name. So late as the reign of 

 Henry VIII., Eeculver was still a mile distant from the sea ; 

 but, in 1780, the encroaching waves had already reached the 

 site of the ancient camp, the walls of which, cemented as thev 

 were into one solid mass by the unrivalled masonry of the 

 Eomans, continued for several years after they were under- 

 mined to overhang the sea. In 1804, part of the churchyard 

 with the adjoining houses was washed away, and then the 

 ancient church with its two lofty spires, a well-known land- 

 mark, was dismantled and abandoned as a place of worship. 



Shakspeare's Cliff at Dover has also suffered greatly from the 

 waves, and continually diminishes in height, the slope of the 

 hill being towards the land. About the year 1810, there was 



