th-west of England and of France; and we
shall soon be convinced that the sea has made ravages upon those coasts
in proportion to its power, and has left them in a shape corresponding
to the composition of the land, in destroying the softer, and leaving
the harder parts[14].

[Footnote 14: M. de Lamblardie, _ingenieur des ponts et chaussees_, has
made a calculation, seemingly upon good grounds, with regard to the
wasting of a part of the coast of France, between the Seine and the
Somme. This coast is composed of _falaises_, (or chalk cliffs, like the
opposite coast of England), which are 200 feet high above the level of
the sea, composed of strata of marl, separated by beds of flint. This
coast is found to be wasted, at an average, at the rate of one foot _per
annum_. We may thus perhaps form some idea of the time since the coast
of France and that of England had been here united, or one continued
mass of those strata which are the same on both those coasts.]

With those hard and rugged coasts of Britain and Ireland, let us
contrast the east coasts; What a difference between these and the west
side! Upon the west side, there are no sand banks left upon the coast;
the mariner has nothing there to fear but rocks. It is otherwise on the
east; here we find a tamer coast, and, in many places, a sandy bottom.
On the west, nothing appears opposed to the storm of the ocean except
the hardest and most solid rock; on the east, we find coasts exposed
to the sea which could not have remained in a similar situation on the
west. Let us but compare the two opposite coasts of England, viz. the
promontory of Norfolk and Suffolk upon the one side, and Pembrokeshire
and Carnarvonshire on the other, both similarly exposed, the one to the
north east storm of the German sea, the other to the south west billows
of the Atlantic. What a striking difference! The coast in the bay of
Cardigan is a hard and strong coast compared with that of Norfolk and
Suffolk; the one is strong schistus, the other the most tender clay;
yet the soft coast stands protuberant to the sea, the harder coast is
hollowed out into a bay; the one has no protection but the sands with
which it is surrounded, the other had not remained till this day but
for the protection of the most solid rocks of Pembrokeshire and
Carnarvonshire, which oppose the fury of the waves.

The last general observation which I shall propose, has, for its
subject, a more enlarged view than those n