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10 May 2016

Somerset, Bath, from Berchen Cliff

Half an hour’s (very steep up-and-down) walk took us from Widcombe to Beechen Cliff. In Northanger Abbey the Tilneys and Catherine Morland ‘determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.’ Henry Tilney ‘talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances — side-screens and perspectives — lights and shades; — and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.’

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