soil. A good instance of a locality thus modified and rendered suitable for an invalid residence, is Apsley Guise, in Bedfordshire, of which, more anon. The northern line of our Midland District from the Mersey to the Humber cuts us off THE NORTH OF ENGLAND DISTRICT. The coast line of this district-we now have it on both sides-is much more extensive than in the last; it has, too, bolder, and more picturesque features generally, and we get more of the region of mountain than we have hitherto met with, except, of course, in Wales, especially towards the western side, where the hills of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, joining the Border Cheviots northward, hold on their southern course till Derbyshire sees their termination. We need scarcely remark that here we have a region rich in haunts for the tourist and health-seeker, for the Lake District is a host in itself. On the East coast, Scarborough and Filey, Bridlington and Whitby, are best known as sca-side quarters, though smaller places dot the coast to Tweedmouth. On the West, around Liverpool, resorts for health and pleasure lie thick on the shores of the Mersey embouchure. Egremont, New Brighton, Waterloo, Seaforth, close at hand; further North, Southport, Lytham, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Peil, Morecambe, all open their doors to the summer visitors. In mineral waters we are not rich -Harrogate and Scarborough are best known; but in Yorkshire we find sulphureous springs of lesser note-Askeron, Croft and Dinsdale, Loansbury and Ripon: Thirsk is a saline, and Kirby in Westmoreland, chalybeate. The climate of the district presenting so much difference in elevation, and consequently, in shelter, is greatly varied, although the proximity to the sea gives a certain equality, and to the West especially considerable mildness, with much wet: the Northern latitude and mountain ground exposes some spots to the full rigour of winter; but as to the salubrity of the climate there can be no doubt. SOUTHERN SCOTLAND. Such are the general characteristics of the four great Health Districts of England; but England is not Britain, and we have yet another dividing line to take, and fit one, too, for the land of mountain and flood, for it lies along the border hills and ends with the Tweed. North of it lies the land of the tourist healthsecker, seeing that Scotland's mountains, lochs, and rivers have the lion's share of visitors. We are not, however, going to take you off to the Highlands, whence we should certainly not get baek for the rest of the summer; but as rivers have hitherto marked our boundaries, they shall do so still, and we make Forth and Clyde the limit of our range, but even this limit gives us abundant scope. Scotland has no watering places to vie with Brighton, Torquay, Harrogate, or Leamington, but she has numerous pleasant resorts of less pretension, many of them rendered interesting by the romance either of situation or of history. The East Coast is studded with little sea-side resorts from Berwick to Edinburgh, the centre of the district gives the picturesque and lovely pastoral scenes of the Southern Highlands, and when we go to Frith of Clyde we shall find the whole shores dotted with habitations, the detached villa, the splendid mansion, and the rising town. The mineral waters are few, and, compared with those of England, little visited on their own account. When we have named Moffatt, Pitcaithly, and Peterhead, we have given the most noted. CHAPTER VI. SOUTHERN HEALTH DISTRICT OF ENGLAND. ITS LIMITS-ERITH-GRAVESEND—SOUTHEND AND HERNE BAY—MARGATE, RAMSGATE, AND BROADSTAIRS-DOVER AND FOLKESTONE-SANDGATE AND HYTHE — TUNBRIDGE WELLS— HASTINGS AND ST. LEONARDS-EASTBOURNE-BRIGHTON-WORTHING. OUR Southern Health District, we have already remarked, includes, as its most characteristic section, that part of Britain which has been described by Sir James Clark as the "Mild Region of England," and which extends from about Hastings on the coast of Sussex, along the shores of Hampshire, Dorset, Devon, and Corn wall, turns the Land's End, and terminates somewhere about Weston-super-Mare, at the opening of the Severn mouth into the Bristol Channel. In this mild region we must also include the Channel Islets. The whole is, emphatically, an invalid region, though it possesses many a pleasant place for summer visitors, and many a wild scene as well; but its characteristic is the mild, sheltered, southexposed, sea-tempered resort, where our invalids seek covert from the rigours of winter, and the, perhaps, more trying cast winds of spring. One portion of our Southern Health District has, however, no right-probably, no desire, to be classed as an invalid station; its visitors are, for the most part, summer birds, and are seeking pleasure more than, or at least as much as, health. What would Londoners, who want their annual sea-airing, both for themselves and their families, and who yet cannot go far, or altogether from home, do without that stretch of Kentish coast which, including the white cliffs of Albion, extends from Gravesend, round the North Foreland, the South Foreland, and, stretching beyond Sandgate, merges, as it were, by its last localities, into the mild region? It is what the Clyde is to Glasgow, the Mersey shores to Liverpool -an outlet of easy access, where the well-to-do man of business may locate his family, and may himself escape to for flying visits, without quite losing sight of the shop or the counting-house. Ramsgate and Margate were for long the places of resort, and their names were familiar as such, while many now rising into fame were but collections of fishermen's cottages, or even bare sea-shore; now the whole coast is becoming studded with summer sea-side homes. How do we make our start? London Bridge, of course,-but, Rail or Boat? If beauty of country be your objecta ride through "The Garden of England" guarantees it-choose the former; but, as we are healthward bound, we must adopt the latter, not because the Thames' banks, apart from extra objects of interest, have much in themselves to recommend them, but because we more readily get among our Health Resorts. As we steam down the river, Erith, with its old ivy-mantled church, backed by wooded knolls, gives some indication of Kentish richness, and is some little break to the flat monotony of the shores. Well do we remember how they looked the first time we steamed up between them on a dull November morning. Greenhithe Gravesend-and we reach the first spot we could with any consistency look upon as a sea-side resort. A very great resort Gravesend certainly is; but we have too many distant places, too many real sea-sides to notice, to keep WINDMILL HILL, GRAVESEND. you here, especially as London visitors or London residents can so easily explore it for themselves, and make acquaintance with its shrimps and water-cresses, and the view from the old mill. Past Gravesend we have the reiteration of low, unin teresting shore, and in this particular we certainly lose sight of the fertility and cultivated beauty of the land; but we turn our backs, or rather our sides to it, and looking steadily forward, open our lungs to the sea-breeze, which is now fairly saluting us. Moreover, if the shores are tame, the shipping is notthat wonderful stream of shipping which is ever setting up the mouth of "The River." The receding shores, and, mayhap, the increasing motion of our boat, and its consequences, tell us that we are nearing that mouth, and the embouchure of the Medway and the Nore Light confirm the information. On the Essex or north side, a long pier, with a sailpropelled truck running up it, tells of the quiet flat of Southend, and that, too, is a sea-side Health Resort, only the sea gets such a long way off at low tide you almost doubt it. However, tastes differ, and some people will like Southend, with its quiet, very quiet ways, and its gossiping boatmen. If they do not, they can cross the water to the Kentish side, to another long pier, not so long, however, as the lastand to what ought to be a rising locality and fix themselves at Herne Bay. It is economical withal, and possesses most of the conveniences of a watering-place; moreover, the "Head of the House," on his journeys to and fro, is sure to come in for a good share of sea-air, and, at times, sea-something else, which will do him no harm. (To be continued.) THE CAPTAIN OF THE VULTURE. CHAPTER III. LOOKING BACK. JOHN HOMERTON the blacksmith only spoke advisedly when he said that the young squire, Ringwood Markham, was ruining himself up in London. The simple inhabitants of villages are apt to exaggerate the dangers and the vices of that metropolis of which they form such strange ideas; but in this case, honest Master Homerton did not exaggerate, for the young squire was doing his best to push forward upon that smooth and easy highway, known, as the road to ruin. Ringwood Markhamx was three years older than his sister Millicent, and six years younger than his Cousin Darrell, for old Squire Markham had married late in life, and had, shortly after his marriage, adopted little Darrell, the only child. of a younger brother, who had died early,, leaving a small fortune to his orphan boy. Ringwood Markham in person closely resembled his sister. He had the same, pale, golden hair, the deep, limpid, blue eyes, the small features, and delicate pink and white complexion. But that which was charming in a girl of nineteen was only effeminate-looking in a man of threeand-twenty, and the old squire was rexed to see his beloved son grow up into nothing better than a pretty boy. A fairfaced, dollish young coxcomb, the admiration of simpering school-girls and middle-aged women, and the type of the Strephons and Damons who at that time. everran our English poetry. Ringwood had always been his father's favourite, to the exclusion even of pretty, loveable Millicent; and as his cousin. Darrell grew to manhood, it vexed the old squire to see the elder, highspirited and stalwart, broad-chested and athletic, accomplished in all manly occupations; a good shot, an expert swordsman, a bold horseman, and a reckless, daredevil, generous, thoughtless, openhearted lad, while Ringwood only thought of his pretty face and his embroidered waistcoat, and loved the glittering steel ernaments of his sword-hilt far better than the blade of that weapon. It was hard for the squire to have to confess it, even to himself; but it was not the less a fact, that Ringwood Markham was a milksop. The old man concealed his mortification in the furthermost corner of his heart, and, with a very common order of justice, hated Darrell for being so superior to his son. This was how the pale face of sorrow first peeped in upon the little family group at Compton Hall. Darrell and Millicent had loved each other from that early childish, but unforgotten day, on which the orphan boy peeped into his baby cousin's cradle, and cried out at her pretty face and tiny rosy hands. I am not, perhaps, justified in saying that love on her side began so soon as this, but I know that it did on his; and I know, too, that the first syllables cousin Milly ever lisped were those two simple sounds that shaped the name of Darrell, They loved each other from such an early age, and they loved each other so honestly and truly, that perhaps they were never, in the legitimate sense of the word, lovers. They had no pretty coquettish jealousies, no charming quarrels and more charming reconciliations, no stolen meetings by moonlit nights; no interposition of bribed waiting-maids charged with dainty perfumed notes; no; they loved each other honestly and openly, with a calm unchanging affection which had so little need of words, that few lookers-on would perhaps have suspected its quiet depth. If the squire saw this growing attachment between the young people, he neither favoured nor discouraged it. He had never cared very much for Millicent. She and her brother were the children of a woman whom he had married for the sake of a handsome fortune, and who died unnoticed and unregretted, and some people said, of a broken heart, before Millicent was a twelvemonth old. So things went on pretty smoothly. Millicent and Darrell rode together through the shady green lanes, and over the stunted grass and heather on Compton Moor, while Ringwood idled about the village, or lounged at the bar of the Black Bear, until a catastrophe occurred which changed the whole current of events. Darrell and Ringwood Markham had a desperate quarrel; a quarrel in which U blows were struck and hard words spoken upon both sides, and which abruptly ended Darrell's residence at Compton Hall. I have said that Ringwood Markham was a coxcomb and an idler. There were not wanting those in Compton who called him something worse than either of these. There were some who called him a heartless coward and a liar, but who never so spoke of him in the presence of his stalwart cousin Darrell. The day came when Darrell himself called him by these eruel names. He had discovered a flirtation between Ringwood and a girl of seventeen, the daughter of a small farmer; a flirtation which, but for this timely discovery, might have ended in shame and despair. Scarlet with passion, the young man had taken his foppish cousin by the collar of his velvet coat and dragged him straight into the presence of the father of the girl, saying, with an oath, such as was, unhappily, only too common a hundred years ago, "You'd better keep an eye on this young man, Farmer Morrison, if you want to save your daughter from a scoundrel." Ringwood turned very white-he was one of those who grew pale and not red with passion-and sprang at his cousin like a cat, caught at his throat as if he would have strangled him; but one swinging blow from Darrell's fist laid the young man on Farmer Morrison's sanded floor, with a general illumination glittering before his dazzled eyes. Darrell strode back to the Hall, where he packed some clothes in his saddle-bags, and wrote two letters, one to his uncle, telling him, abruptly enough, that he had knocked Ringwood down because he had found him acting like a rascal, and that he felt, as there was now bad blood between them, they had better part. His second letter was addressed to Millicent, and was almost as brief as the first. He simply told her of the quarrel, adding, that he was going to London to seek his fortune, and that he should return to claim her as his wife. He left the etters on the high chimneypiece in his edroom, and went down to the stables, where he found his own nag Balmerino, and fastened his few possessions to the saddle, mounted the horse in the yard, and rode slowly away from the house in which his boyhood and youth had been spent. Ringwood Markham went home late at night with a pale face and a handkerchief bound about his forehead. He found his father sitting over a spark of fire in the oak parlour on one side of the hall. The door of this parlour was ajar, and as the young man tried to creep past on his way upstairs, the squire called to him sharply," Ringwood, come here." He cowered sulkily into the room, hanging his broken head down, and looking at the floor. "What's the matter with your head, Ringwood ?" 66 The pony shied at some sheep on the moor, and threw me against a stone," muttered the young man. "You're telling a lie, Ringwood Markham. I've a letter from your cousin Darrell in my pocket. Bah, man! you're the first of the Markhams that ever took a blow without paying it back with interest. You've your mother's milk-andwater disposition, as well as your mother's face.' me. "Ringwood Markham, don't provoke It's grief enough to have a son that can't take his own part. Go to bed." The young man left the room with the same slouching step with which he had entered it. He stole cautiously upstairs, for he thought his cousin Darrell was still in the house, and he had no wish to arouse that gentleman. So Millicent was left alone at Compton Hall. Utterly alone, for she had now no one to love her. Ithink modern physiologists would have discovered in the nature of Millicent Markham much to wonder at and to explain. It was a delicate and fragile piece of mechanism-very exquisite if you could only keep it in order, but terribly liable to be injured or destroyed. She was not a elever girl-her intellectual amusements were of the simplest order; an old romance would make her happy for days, and she would cry over the mildest verses ever written by starving poets in garrets east of Temple Bar. With her, the heart took the place of the mind. Appeal to her affection, and you might make her what you pleased. If Darrell had asked her to learn Greek for his sake, she would have toiled valiantly through dreary obscurities of grammar, and scated herself meekly by his side to construe the hardest page in Homer. Love her, and her whole nature expanded like some beautiful flower that spreads itself out to the morning sun. Withdraw this benign influence, and the same nature contracted into something smaller and meaner than itself-something easily crushed into any shape whatever by a little rough handling. Darrell, therefore, being gone, and dear old Sally Masterson having left the Hall to be mistress of the Black Bear, poor Millicent was abandoned to the tender mercies of her father and brother, neither of whom cared much more for her than they did for the meek white and livercoloured spaniel that followed her about the house. So the delicate piece of mechanism got out of order, and Millicent's days were devoted to novel reading and to poring over an embroidered waistcoatpiece that was destined for Darrell, and the colours of which were dull and faded from the tears that had dropped upon the silks. She kept Darrell's letter in her bosom. In all the ways of the world she was as unlearned as in that day when Darrell had peeped in upon her asleep in the cradle, and she had no more doubt that her cousin would make a fortune and return in a few years to claim her as his wife, than she had of her own existence. But in spite of this hope, the days were long and dreary, her father neglectful, her brother supercilious and disagreeable, and her home altogether very miserable. The bitterest misery was yet to come. It came in the person of a certain Captain George Duke, who dropped into Compton on his way from Marley Water to the metropolis, and who contrived to scrape acquaintance with Squire Markham in the best parlour at the Black Bear. Captain George and Master Ringwood became sworn friends in a day or two, and the hearty sailor promised to stop at Compton again on his return to his ship the Vulture. The simple villagers readily accepted Captain Duke as that which he had represented himself, an officer of His Majesty's navy; but there were people in the seaport of Marley Water who said that the good ship whose name was written down as the Vulture in the Admiralty's books, was quite a different class of vessel to the trim little craft which lay sometimes in a quiet corner of the obscure harbour at Marley. There were malicious people who whispered such words as 'privateer! - pirate! slaver!'-but the most daring took good care only to whisper out of the Captain's hearing, for George Duke's sword was as often out of his scabbard as in it, during his brief visits to the little sea-port. However it might be, handsome, rollicking, light-hearted, free-handed George Duke became a great favourite with Squire Markham and his son Ringwood. Compton Hall rang night after night with the gay peals of his hearty laughter; corks flew, and glasses jingled, as the three men sat up till midnight (a terrible hour at Compton) over their Burgundy and claret. It was in one of these halfdrunken bouts that Squire Markham promised the hand of his daughter Millicent to Captain George Duke. "You're in love with her, George, and you shall have her!" the old man said: "I can give her a couple of thousand pounds at my death, and if anything should happen to Ringwood, she'll be sole heiress to the Compton property. You shall have her, my boy! I know there's some sneaking courtship been going on between Milly and a broadshouldered, fair-haired nephew of mine, but that shan't stand in your way, for the lad is no favourite with me; and if I choose to say it, my fine lack-a-daisical miss shall marry you in a week's time." Captain Duke sprang from his chair, and wringing the squire's hand in his, cried out with a lover's rapture "She's the prettiest girl in England! and I'd sooner have her than any duchess at St. James's." "She's pretty enough as for that," said Ringwood, superciliously, "and she'd be a deal prettier if she was not always whimpering." Farmer Morrison could have told how Master Ringwood himself had gone whimpering out of the sanded kitchen on the day that Darrell Markham knocked him down; and the plain-spoken farmer told him, after dressing his broken head, that if he ever came about those premisesagain, it would be to get such a thrashing. as he would be easily able to remember.. Both the children inherited something of the nervous weakness of that poor, delicate, and neglected mother who had died seventeen years before in Sally Masterson's arms; but timid and sensitive as Millicent was, I think that the higher: nature had been given to her, and that beneath that childish timidity and that nervous excitability which would bring: |