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We have an old walled town, rich in cool public wells of water, on the top of a hill within and above the present business-town; and if it were some hundreds of miles further from England, instead of being, on a clear day, within sight of the grass growing in the crevices of the chalk-cliffs of Dover, you would long ago have been bored to death about that town.
But a prettier one than that, her husband thought, was to see her in her boat at sunset; when sea and sky were aflame, when every flake of foam was a rainbow, and the great chalk-cliffs were blood-red; when the wind blew her net off, and in pretty petulance she pulled her hair down, and it rippled all about her as she dipped into the blazing West. Dr.
High Down, with its fine chalk-cliffs, rises six hundred feet above the sea, being haunted by numerous sea-gulls, and under it is Scratchell's Cave, a singular recess in the rock accessible only by boat.
Marble, sea-shells, the chalk-cliffs of Dover, the limestone fossils which preserve for us animal forms of species long since extinct, the coral formations that are stretching out in dangerous reefs in so many seas of the tropics, are all identical in their chief ingredient, and, as we see, are by natural processes and various accidents constantly interchanging their positions.
Beyond, the coast rises up from the low sandy level, and rounding the South Foreland, on which is a fine electric lighthouse of modern construction, we come to the chalk-cliffs, on top of which are the dark towers of Dover Castle, from whose battlements the road descends to the town along the water's edge and in the valley of the little stream that gives the place its name the Dour, which the Celts called the Dwr or "water," and the Romans the Dubræ.
Tennyson's pretty home is at Farringford, near Freshwater, on the western slope of the Isle of Wight, just where it begins to contract into the long point of the chalk-cliffs that terminate with the Needles. At Brixton, on the south-western coast, is Bishop Ken's parsonage, where William Wilberforce spent the closing years of his life.
Great trunks of ivy grow up from the dining-room, and all the inner courts are carpeted with green turf, with hazel-bushes appearing here and there among the ruined walls. A fine row of old chestnuts stands beyond the moat, and from the towers are distant views of Beachy Head, its white chalk-cliffs making one of the most prominent landmarks of the southern coast.
Now do the lamps begin to twinkle lazily. There is hardly a breath stirring, and the great chalk-cliffs gleam out in a ghostly fashion, like mammoth wave-crests.
I might have waited on forever, for Mr. McKey had not cast one pebbly word that must send up wavy ripples from deep spirit-waters; he only wandered, as any other might have done, upon the shore of my life, along its quiet, dewy sands, above its chalk-cliffs, and by the side of its green, sloping shores.
What a scene of continual activity is presented by the chalk-cliffs of Old England! How they are worn, and broken up, and fantastically sculptured by the influence of winds and waters!
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