One does not regret or even feel the want
of trees here, while the eye ranges down from that dappled cloud-
world above, over that sheet of purple heather, those dells bedded
with dark green fern, of a depth and richness of hue which I never
saw before--over those bright grey granite rocks, spangled with black
glittering mica and golden lichens, to rest at last on that sea
below, which streams past the island in a swift roaring torrent of
tide.'
'Sea, Claude? say, ocean. This is real Atlantic blue here beneath
us. No more Severn mud, no more grass-green bay-water, but real
ocean sapphire--dark, deep, intense, Homeric purple, it spreads away,
away, there before us, without a break or islet, to the shores of
America. You are sitting on one of the last points of Europe; and
therefore all things round you are stern and strange with a barbaric
pomp, such as befits the boundary of a world.'
'Ay, the very form of the cliffs shows them to be the breakwaters of
a continent. No more fantastic curves and bands of slate, such as
harmonize so well with the fairyland which we left this morning; the
cliffs, with their horizontal rows of cubical blocks, seem built up
by Cyclopean hands.
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