It indicates little that is remarkable at a distance; but a truly sublime effect is produced when the stranger is placed under its awful roof with his back against the concave chalk:  for he then sees above him a magnificent Arch two hundred feet in height and overhanging the beach at least one hundred and eighty!—­yet so true, nay, even elegant is the sweep, that it rather resembles the stupendous work of Art, than the casual production of Nature.  To form an idea of the sublimity of the scene, the reader should task his memory with the dimensions of some of the proudest architectural monuments in Great Britain:  and the comparison would immediately remove all doubt, that a sight of the Arch itself would amply repay the trouble of a visit to Freshwater.

[Illustration:  SCRATCHELL’S BAY, And the NEEDLE ROCKS, as viewed from a bold Bluff called Sun Corner, being the termination of the Freshwater Cliffs.—­Isle if Wight.]

Scratchell’s Bay is about half-a-mile in breadth; being formed by Sun Corner and the Grand Arch on the eastern side, and on the west by the

NEEDLE ROCKS,

Which stretch out into the sea a considerable distance:  they are remains of the original cliff, and forcibly illustrate the destructive power of the ocean’s stormy winds and waves, which in successive ages have removed so vast a quantity of the adjacent chalk.  Nor are their ravages at all diminished at the present time:  for it is only within the last few years that the smallest rock has been completely insulated; while another immense mass of the cliff is evidently separating by degrees, and will probably become ere long entirely detached, forming a magnificent pyramid two or three hundred feet high.  It is impossible to convey by verbal description a correct idea of these celebrated rocks:  for in passing round or through them, they assume a different shape almost every dozen yards; sometimes appearing like a continuation of the main promontory,—­sometimes as one or more lofty acuminated pyramids,—­or again we see the different masses extending in nearly a straight line, between which we catch a distant view of Christchurch and other objects on the opposite coast.  The name (inappropriate to their present form,) was derived from a spiry rock, 120 feet high and very slender, which fell in the year 1764, having been nearly worn through by the incessant action of the tides:  its base however is still visible at low water.

The Pomone, a fifty-gun frigate, was wrecked on the most western of these rocks, on June 11th, 1811, when returning home after an absence of three years; but owing to the fineness of the weather, the crew and passengers, including some Persian princes, reached the shore in safety; and most of her guns and stores were removed before she went to pieces.  “The vessel,” says Mr. Webster, “afforded me a scale by which to judge of the size of the Needles, and I was surprized to find that the hull of the frigate did