It
is that very contrast which makes the place so unique. One is
accustomed to connect with the notion of the sea bare cliffs, breezy
downs, stunted shrubs struggling for existence: and instead of them
behold a forest wall, 500 feet high, of almost semi-tropic
luxuriance. At one turn, a deep glen, with its sea of green woods,
filled up at the mouth with the bright azure sheet of ocean.--Then
some long stretch of the road would be banked on one side with
crumbling rocks, festooned with heath, and golden hawkweed, and
London pride, like velvet cushions covered with pink lace, and beds
of white bramble blossom alive with butterflies; while above my head,
and on my right, the cool canopy of oak and birch leaves shrouded me
so close, that I could have fancied myself miles inland, buried in
some glen unknown to any wind of heaven, but that everywhere between
green sprays and grey stems, gleamed that same boundless ocean blue,
seeming, from the height at which I was, to mount into the very sky.
It looked but a step out of the leafy covert into blank infinity.
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