church.  Now as there is really no evidence whatever in the neighbourhood that would lead us to suppose in the slightest degree, that the sea has encroached upon the land by its gaining a higher GENERAL level (an idea deprecated by many eminent geologists), we must take the alternative in accounting for the phenomenon, and infer that the land of the haven must have SUNK at some very distant period, and that more recently, the same fate attended the foundations of the church, which certainly could not have been originally built so very close to the water’s edge, as to be constantly enveloped in sea-foam during every fresh breeze from the east.

Analagous to the above mutation in the state of the land, is the following singular fact related by Sir Rd.  Worsley, of Appuldurcombe, who, living as it were on the spot, was not likely to be imposed upon.  The reader is to picture to himself three very high downs standing nearly in a line,—­St. Catharine’s, Week, and Shanklin:  the latter, when Sir Richard wrote the account in 1781, he guessed to be about 100 feet higher than Week Down, but which “was barely visible” over the latter from St. Catharine’s, in the younger days of many of the old inhabitants of Chale, and who had also been told by their fathers that at one time Shanklin could be seen only from the top of the beacon on St. Catharine’s.  “This testimony, if allowed,” says the worthy baronet, “argues either a sinking of the intermediate down, or a rising of one of the other hills, the causes of which are left for philosophical investigation:”  and so with respect to the haven and the church, we leave it as a curious question to amuse our scientific friends—­whether it is the sea that has risen, or the land which has subsided?

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BEMBRIDGE.

>> This is a peninsula about three miles long by one broad, terminating abruptly on the sea-side in a range of SUBLIME CHALK PRECIPICES. The part easily accessible to strangers is White-cliff Bay, two miles from the ferry.

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On account of the inconvenient situation of Bembridge as to the usual routes, it is not so much visited as Freshwater, whose precipices are on rather a grander scale, and the most celebrated in Great Britain of this magnificent species of coast scenery.  For this reason, and also as the cliffs of both places agree almost precisely in their geological character (for they are but the termini of the same chain of hills), we shall merge the general description of the former in that of the latter; but we would advise the stranger who may sojourn at Ryde, by all means to visit Bembridge, if he should decline going to Freshwater; and if in a good boat on a fine day, so much the better,—­he will be well gratified with the brilliant spectacle which these noble