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‘The distinctive feature of the scene is, in my eyes, the daring juxtaposition of large simple masses of positive colour. There are none of the misty enamelled tones of Lynmouth, or the luscious richness of Clovelly. The forms are so simple and severe, that they would be absolutely meagre, were it not for the rich colouring with which Nature has so lovingly made up for the absence of all softness, all picturesque outline. 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.’

‘Yet how symbolic is the difference between them and that equally Cyclopic masonry of the Exmoor coast. There every fracture is fresh, sharp-edged, crystalline; the worn-out useless hills are dropping to pieces with their own weight. Here each cube is delicately rounded off at the edges, every crack worn out into a sinuous furrow, like the scars of an everlasting warfare with the winds and waves.’

‘Does it not raise strange longings in you,’ said Claude, ‘to gaze out yonder over the infinite calm, and then to remember that beyond it lies America!–the new world; the future world; the great Titan- baby, who will be teeming with new Athens and Londons, with new Bacons and Shakspeares, Newtons and Goethes, when this old worn-out island will be–what? Oh! when I look out here, like a bird from its cage, a captive from his dungeon, and remember what lies behind me, to what I must return to-morrow–the over-peopled Babylon of misery and misrule, puffery and covetousness–and there before me great countries untilled, uncivilized, unchristianized, crying aloud for man to come and be man indeed, and replenish the earth and subdue it. “Oh that I had wings as a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest!” Here, lead me away; my body is growing as dizzy as my mind. I feel coming over me that horrible longing of which I have heard, to leap out into empty space. How the blank air whispers, “Be free!” How the broad sea smiles, and calls, with its ten thousand waves, “Be free!”–As I live, if you do not take me away I shall throw myself over the cliff.’

I did take him away, for I knew the sensation and its danger well. It has nothing to do with physical giddiness. Those who are cliff- bred, and who never were giddy for an instant in their lives, have often felt themselves impelled to leap from masts, and tree-tops, and cliffs; and nothing but the most violent effort of will could break the fascination. I cannot but think, by the bye, that many a puzzling suicide might be traced to this same emotion acting on a weak and morbid brain.