when still and
with folded wings, he is but a speck of black. A spire of chalk still
higher stands out from the wall, but the rains have got behind it and
will cut the crevice deeper and deeper into its foundation. Water, too,
has carried the soil from under the turf at the summit over the verge,
forming brown streaks.

Upon the beach lies a piece of timber, part of a wreck; the wood is torn
and the fibres rent where it was battered against the dull edge of the
rocks. The heat of the sun burns, thrown back by the dazzling chalk; the
river of ocean flows ceaselessly, casting the spray over the stones; the
unchanged sky is blue.

Let us go back and mount the steps at the Gap, and rest on the sward
there. I feel that I want the presence of grass. The sky is a softer
blue, and the sun genial now the eye and the mind alike are
relieved--the one of the strain of too great solitude (not the solitude
of the woods), the other of too brilliant and hard a contrast of
colours. Touch but the grass and the harmony returns; it is repose after
exaltation.

A vessel comes round the promontory; it is not a trireme of old Rome,
nor the "fair and stately galley" Count Arnaldus hailed with its seamen
singing the mystery of the sea. It is but a brig in ballast, high out of
the water, black of hull and dingy of sail: still it is a ship, and
there is always an interest about a ship. She is so near, running along
but just outside the reef, that the deck is visible. Up rises her stern
as the billows come fast and roll under; then her bow lifts, and
immediately she rolls, and, loosely swaying with the sea, drives along.

The slope of the billow now behind her is white with the bubbles of her
passage, rising, too, from her rudder. Steering athwart with a widening
angle from the land, she is laid to clear the distant point of
Dungeness. Next, a steamer glides forth, unseen till she passed the
cliff; and thus each vessel that comes from the westward has the charm
of the unexpected. Eastward there is many a sail working slowly into the
wind, and as they approach, talking in the language of flags with the
watch on the summit of the Head.

Once now and then the great _Orient_ pauses on her outward route to
Australia, slowing her engines: the immense length of her hull contains
every adjunct of modern life; science, skill, and civilisation are
there. She starts, and is lost sight of round the cliff, gone straight
away for the very ends of the wor