Threading our way between these forbidden paradises, the road would take us up by the new Church with its sadly beautiful graveyard. A lane turns steeply downwards past the old church, now disused, one of the many smallest churches in England, that has the further note of being the sole wholly Norman structure in the Island. Here are buried the Rev. W. Adams, author of the _Shadow of the Cross_, and John Sterling, Carlyle’s friend, who came to die at Hillside, now a boarding-house near the upper station at Ventnor. Another literary celebrity who lived here was Elizabeth Sewell, whose _Amy Herbert_ and other edifying novels were so popular in her own generation; and in one of them, _Ursula_, she has described the scenery about her home.
The old church is said to be now in danger of slipping down towards the sea. Below it, one descends to Monks’ Bay, traditional landing-place of the French Benedictines who made themselves once so much at home on the Island, as their spiritual descendants are doing now. The sea-walk round
[Illustration: BONCHURCH OLD CHURCH, NEAR VENTNOR]
this bay leads into the Landslip, so called _par excellence_, as the rawest and wildest disturbance of the Undercliff, its last fall being not yet a century old. This wilderness of overgrown knolls and hillocks, tumbled from the crags above, is not to be equalled on our south coast unless by the similar chaos near Lyme Regis, whose broken and bosky charms have been stirred into fresh picturesqueness by slips of more recent date. Over daisied turf one here takes a twisting path that leads by banks of bracken and bramble into thickets of gnarled thorn and other blossoming shade, half-burying green mounds and grey boulders in a tangle where one would soon lose oneself but for occasional glimpses of the sea below, or for running upon the wall of a private enclosure behind, guide for the wanderer in his descent towards Luccombe Chine, who can also ascend to the cliff-walk for Shanklin. The scene is thus described by Thomas Webster, a geologist who visited it a century ago, while the first convulsion was still fresh, before the last slip of 1818 came to make confusion worse confounded.
A considerable portion of the cliff had fallen down, strewing the whole of the ground between it and the sea with its ruins; huge masses of solid rock started up amidst heaps of smaller fragments; whilst immense quantities of loose marl, mixed with stones, and even the soil above with the wheat still growing on it, filled up the spaces between, and formed hills of rubbish which are scarcely accessible. Nothing had resisted the force of the falling rocks. Trees were levelled with the ground, and many lay half buried in the ruins. The streams were choked up, and pools of water were formed in many places. Whatever road or path formerly existed through this place had been effaced; and with some difficulty I passed over this avalanche, which extended many hundred yards. Proceeding eastwards, the whole of the soil seemed to have been moved, and was filled with chasms and bushes lying in every direction. The intricate and rugged path became gradually less distinct, and soon divided into mere sheep tracks, leading into an almost impenetrable thicket. I perceived, however, on my left hand, the lofty wall of rock which belonged to the same stratum as the Undercliff, softened in its rugged character by the foliage which grew in its fissures, and still preserving some remains of its former picturesque beauty. Neglect, and the unfortunate accident which had lately happened, had now altered the features of this once delightful spot; and I was soon bewildered among rocks, streams of water, tangling thorns, and briars.