[Illustration: WHITBY.]
As an expression of the general spirit of English coast scenery, this
plate must be considered the principal one of the series. Like all the
rest, it is a little too grand for its subject; but the exaggerations of
space and size are more allowable here than in the others, as partly
necessary to convey the feeling of danger conquered by activity and
commerce, which characterizes all our northerly Eastern coast. There are
cliffs more terrible, and winds more wild, on other shores; but nowhere
else do so many white sails lean against the bleak wind, and glide
across the cliff shadows. Nor do I know many other memorials of monastic
life so striking as the abbey on that dark headland. We are apt in our
journeys through lowland England, to watch with some secret contempt the
general pleasantness of the vales in which our abbeys were founded,
without taking any pains to inquire into the particular circumstances
which directed or compelled the choice of the monks, and without
reflecting that, if the choice were a selfish one, the selfishness is
that of the English lowlander turning monk, not that of monachism;
since, if we examine the sites of the Swiss monasteries and convents, we
shall always find the snow lying round them in July; and it must have
been cold meditating in these cloisters of St. Hilda's when the winter
wind set from the east. It is long since I was at Whitby, and I am not
sure whether Turner is right in giving so monotonous and severe
verticality to the cliff above which the abbey stands; but I believe it
must have some steep places about it, since the tradition which, in
nearly all parts of the island where fossil ammonites are found, is sure
to be current respecting them, takes quite an original form at Whitby,
owing to the steepness of this rock. In general, the saint of the
locality has simply turned all the serpents to stone; but at Whitby, St.
Hilda drove them over the cliff, and the serpents, before being
petrified, had all their heads broken off by the fall!