continuously as the pulverised contents of an
hour-glass. But here, there is no hand to
turn the glass and raise the sand to its former
level. It disappears with the first tide that
touches it. Every week sees displaced some
portion of arable materials. The plough, next
spring, cannot work so close to the brink of
the precipice, as it has this season. The year
after, it will have to retire still further
inland:—

  "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
    Will creep the stealthy sea from day to day,
    To the last syllable of recorded time;
    And all our yesterdays have shown the cliffs
    The way to dusty death."

"They fence here with bush faggots!"
said an astonished rustic to whom the scene
was new. Yes; for (not to mention the sea-
breezes) whitethorn would be swallowed up
before it had time to get half its growth.
The mouldering track sometimes requires a
cautious foot, and is no place for a man
plenus Bacchi (aut Beeri) on a dark night,
with a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in
his pockets. He might as well, without
practice, try to perform the "main truck"
exploit. And yet I do love to tread (by day)
in these evanescent paths. It is the last look
of a friend bound for Sierra Leone. We
bestow our affections on such things all the
more vehemently, that we must soon part
with them for ever.

And the worst of it is, that the land thus
cruelly arrested and transported for life, is
about the best in the county. Some thirty
years ago I was acquainted with a yeoman of
that neighbourhood, who had on his estate a
field which he and his men always called
"The Sugar Close." One day I ventured the
question, What was the reason for such an
odd name? "Why," said the old man, " I
bought that piece ready sown with wheat;
and after harvest (it was the war time) the
crop paid the purchase money. That was
so sweet, that I called it The Sugar Close."
That field is not quite melted yet ; but will
take its turn.

The causes of the continued fall of the
cliff are two-fold. First, the action of the
waves below and in front; and, secondly, of
the landsprings, above and behind. Where
the first is the more active agent, as in
gravelly cliffs, the ruin mostly takes place
from above, in an earthy avalanche. When
the second cause is the more potent, as in
loamy and clayey strata, (by the hydraulic
pressure, as well as by the eating in of the
landsprings,) the mass usually slips from
below, in a sort of semifluid state, with
decidedly marked waves or huge wrinkles,
reminding one of Professor Forties's description
of the slow, forward-flowing of Alpine
glaciers. It then leaves vast, semi-cratertike,
or shell-like hollows, that are very grand.
as picturesque objects, displaying in their
concavity the contrasted tints of various earths,
and here and there sparkling with a patch of
bright verdure, or a gay tuft of flowers that
have descended from the upland, never to
return, but to be suddenly withered one day
by the contact of salt water.

Where the stream of earth reaches the
beach, it undergoes at its extremity the
progress of melting and absorption by the ocean;
and this is sometimes so gradual, and the
procumbent mass of earth so enormous, that
its surface has time to become clothed with
green pasturage; and a second, minor,
subsiduary cliff is formed in front of, and as a
shoulder to, the original one;—a low cliff next
the sea, having a verdant slope backward to
the taller and parent cliff whence it sprung.
The offspring has then first to undergo
destruction, but its sacrifice affords only a
temporary protection to the hill in its rear.
The same effects recur from the same causes.
The sea is inexorable and insatiable.

At the village of Mundesley it is calculated
that the cliff is cut away at the rate of a yard
a year. I am convinced that this estimate is
much less than the annual demolition at
other parts of the line. But take it at a yard
per annum along the whole series, which
comprises a distance of about twenty miles.
This gives an annual loss of thirty-five thousand
two hundred square yards of surface, in
a country which complains that its area, even
while not on the decrease, is insufficient to
maintain its increasing population, where we
are treading on each other's toes most
inconveniently, and whence we are making
continual shipments of our fellow countrymen,
because we have not room for them at home!
The cubical waste of good earth is enormous,
if we take a yearly slice a yard thick and
twenty miles long, from the face of a cliff a
hundred and fifty feet high, as a rough
average. But numerous instances can be
adduced where the waves have taken away
twenty-one yards of land in three tides. At
Trimingham, upwards of fifty acres of land
have been removed during the last sixty
years; and, on one occasion, four acres and a
half were taken away in one tide.

What has urged me to put pen to paper on
this subject is the prevalence of an unresisting
acquiescence in this ruinous state of things.
Not to hold one's own as long as possible—to
die and give no sign—is so thoroughly
un-English, as to call for remonstrance and
rebuke. We shall probably spend not a few
millions at the Cape, to prevent the Blacks
from driving us out of Black-Land, which we:
might re-conquer, even after it had once got
quite clean rid of us: but we won't lay out a
five-pound note to resist the German ocean,
from whom there are no reprisals obtainable.
Were any foreign potentate to seize upon
Sidestrand, drive off its inhabitants, and
convert the church into a little garrison, we
should by some means soon pitch the impertinent
aggressor and his soldiers over the cliff
into the sea, and re-induct the frightened