... Here's the place: stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight; the murmuring surge That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high; I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. How eloquent is that passage from _King Lear_! Just past Shakespeare Cliff come the twin workings of the Channel Tunnel and the coal-mine, those notorious fiascos which have cost the South Eastern shareholders so much, and have afforded journalists so large an amount of good "copy." From the cliff-top, a steep and winding stairway cut in the chalk leads down to the beach and the Dover coal mine and the beginnings of the Channel Tunnel. Much money has been sunk in both. Some day the Tunnel will be completed; but no one expects coal ever to be commercially mined here. Turn we, though, from these projects to the Admiralty Pier, that centre of interest to visitors and Dover folks alike. Some one--I know not whom--has styled the Admiralty Pier "the pier of the realm," and truly, though you search these coasts, you shall find nothing to compare with it, as a pier. Plymouth Breakwater is a great deal more impressive, but then, it is not a pier, but is set down in midst of a tempestuous Sound, where no one can get at it without risk and trouble. And the Admiralty Pier owes its very great fame largely to the ease with which you can reach it and promenade up and down its almost interminable pavings. Crowds come to see the boats off or in, and people are always sweeping the seas with telescopes and field-glasses, finding a perennial joy in so doing, difficult to be understood. The boats come in, the tidal trains run out along the huge stone causeway; passengers pallid and cold, muffled up in overcoats, glancing around with lack-lustre eyes, crawl miserably from the decks and cabins of the Channel steamers under the amused scrutiny of the callous crowd, and seat themselves thankfully in the waiting train. Other steamers wait impatiently, shrieking intermittently; and other trains bring down intending passengers for the night crossing to France. Sometimes strange scenes are witnessed on the night mail, when passengers are streaming from the boat-express across the gangways. Quiet gentlemen with little luggage and a marked disinclination for the society of their fellows are discovered, as they lurk in remote corners of the deck, seeking to sneak quietly out of the "very front door of England," by other gentlemen--gentlemen with broad shoulders and square-toed boots--who tap