Thenceforward, across the flats, now rich meadows, through lanes with much fine hedgerow timber, the way leads to Lympsham, a village rebuilt by the local squire, who happened to be also the parson, over half a century ago. Every cottage is in a more or less domestic Gothic style, as Gothic was then understood, strongly flavoured with ecclesiasticism. The manor-house itself is Gothic, something after the Strawberry Hill manner of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century date, and really deplorable, were it not that the beautiful and well-wooded grounds, and the magnolias that clothe the walls, soften the effect. The church of St. Christopher, immediately opposite, and encircled by beautiful elms and oaks, has a fine tower that noticeably leans to the west. [Illustration: BLEADON CHURCH.] From Lympsham the road turns abruptly to the coast at Brean, winding and turning unweariedly this way and that, over the open marshes; with deep dykes, half-filled with water and mud, on either side, and willows of every age, from saplings like walking-sticks to reverend ancients, hollow and riven with age, lining them. Thus shall we come at length to Brean, as into the end of all things; for, truly, the spot is desolate. Not, let it be said, with an ugly desolation; for, although as you approach the sea, and the good alluvial earth becomes more and more admixed with sand, the surroundings become mere waste land, these are wastes with their own charm and beauty to any but a farmer, to whose eyes nothing can be so beautiful as a ripening field of good corn when prices are likely to rule high, or a healthy field of swedes when he has much stock to feed. Here a road runs parallel with the coast, under the lee of the impending sand hills, so that if you would catch the merest glimpse of the sea, you must climb to the summits of them and look down. Brean church lies considerably below the level of these surrounding sand-towans, which menace it in a manner not a little alarming in the view of a stranger. But the sand here, at any rate, has done its worst, for although in places across the narrow road it stands higher than the church tower, it is largely held down at last by a sparse growth of coarse grass, and the very height and massiveness of these sandhills act, under the circumstances, as a shield against the clouds of other sand still blowing in during rough weather from the sea.