volume falls in opportunely enough for the further description of Mount
St. Michael, engraved in No. 477 of _The Mirror_.


Breakfasting in haste, I procured a horse and a guide, and set out for
the mount, no less celebrated for its historical importance, than for
the peculiarity of its position. As soon as I had emerged from the
streets of Avranches, I saw before me a vast bay, now entirely deserted
by the tide, and consisting partly of sand, partly of slime, intersected
by the waters of several rivers, and covered, during spring tides, at
high water.--Two promontories, the one bluff and rocky, the other sandy
and low, project, one on either hand, into the sea; and in the open
space between these two points are two small islands, from around which
the sea ebbs at low water: one of them is a desert rock, called the
Tombelaine, and the other the Mont St. Michel.[3] The space thus covered
and deserted alternately by the sea is about eight square leagues, and
is here called the Grève.

The Mont St. Michel, which is about the same height as the Great Pyramid
of Egypt, and now stood, as that does, upon a vast plain of sand, which
is here, however, skirted in its whole length by the sea, has a very
striking and extraordinary aspect. It appeared, as the water was so
close behind it, to rise out of the sea, upon the intense and dazzling
blue of which its grey rocks and towers were relieved in a sharp and
startling manner; and, as I descended lower and lower on the hill-side,
and drew near the beach, its pinnacles seemed to increase in height, and
the picturesque effect was improved.

At length I emerged from the shady road upon the naked beach, and saw
the ferry-boat and the Charon that were to convey me and my charger over