the plunder of ravaging Danes and enriched by the golden fleeces of the days of the Plantagenets, were suddenly launched on a flood of prosperity. New watering-places grew quickly into note and popularity from the small beginnings of a solitary coastguard station or a couple of fishers' huts-like Bournemouth, where Lord Malmesbury remembers to have bagged snipe on the swampy site of the public gardens. Now there is a rich embarrassment of choice, in scenery to gratify all tastes, and in air to suit all complaints and constitutions. You desire to be braced and set up-you may go to Scarborough, to Whitby, to Cromer, to Lowestoft, or to Ramsgate. If an irritable throat or enfeebled chest is to be soothed in a balmy atmosphere, you may repair to Bournemouth, beneath its sheltering heights and pine woods; to Torquay, basking below its rocks in its semi-tropical shrubberies; or, better still, to the Lizard or Penzance, where positively the mean temperature of an English year is scarcely lower than that of overrated Naples. If you delight in picturesque coast scenery, you can choose between downs and cliffs. For downs, with their broad and glorious sea-views and the life-giving air of the rolling plateaux dipping down into sheltered dells with their copses, manor-houses, and lichen-covered farm-steadings, nothing approaches what Gilbert

N

White magniloquently describes as that " magnificent range of mountains. stretching westwards from Beachy Head towards the Solent. For rocks and high-crested heathy hills, you have the half-savage districts in North Somerset and North Devon, hanging over the Bristol Channel, with the beauties and traditions interwoven in our literature by the genius of Kingsley, Blackmore, and Besant. One need ask no better headquarters for excursions than Ilfracombe, or Lynton and Lynmouth guarding the sea-gate to Exmoor; while, by way of contrast, there is Clovelly in its flowery cleft, with the cul-de-sac inaccessible to carriages, and Westward Ho, with its airy links, the headquarters of the Western golfers. But there are natives of our sea-girt isles so unhappily constituted as to detest the sea in every shape; their livers are affected by the sea-air, as their stomachs are upset by the sea-motion. In that case, they

may fall back on the sylvan beauties of rural England, or withdraw themselves to the wooded valleys of Wales. There, too, the choice of retreats is inexhaustible, with endless variations. in atmosphere and landscapes. At Leamington you have soft but somewhat enervating air among the oaks and elms of the most English of English parks, and the immortal memories of Shakespeare or Scott. From Malvern you may

either climb the slippery turf of the hillsides to the Worcestershire and Herefordshire beacons, looking out over something like a dozen of counties; or you may plunge down into the windings of the Wye valley, where the thick foliage flourishes in a perpetual drip. From Buxton and Matlock you may explore peaks, precipices, and fairy caverns under weeping skies; from Harrogate, Ilkley, or Ben Rhydding, you may dip into the depths of the Yorkshire dales-hear the crow of the grouse-cock or the whistle of the curlew on the high moors-or lose yourself in dreamy recollections of the past, in the cloistered loneliness of the ruined Yorkshire abbeys. In short, our English watering-places are lavishly rich in every sort of romantic attractions, but it is to be feared that they are chiefly frequented by Philistines. Esthetic and intellectual fascinations are either ignored or made the hypocritical pretext for a picnic, with the inevitable consequences of over-eating and indigestions. The gayest society goes by preference to the sea, specially affecting the places where prices are most extravagant. It loves crowds and limits its strolls to the esplanades, except when a boating or a riding party can be made indirectly to pay. For with shrewd men of business and the sharp mothers of marriageable daughters the holiday season becomes another form of speculative in

vestment.

At the dances and tables d'hôte of the grand hotels they may make eligible acquaintances with golden youth and men of position who would never dream of Sheffield or Manchester. Young ladies who can be trusted to take care of themselves read novels under sunshades on the sands, and are innocently open to romantic adventures. A casual introduction can be pleasantly followed up in hotels, where there are countless occasions for flirtation. Halfa - dozen dazzling toilets may be made in the course of the day, as at Newport, Saratoga, or Trouville. The impressionable idler, sorely bored with his own society, and with much superfluous time upon his hands, is naturally susceptible to the seductions of the sirens, and if he finds that the enchantress is an heiress, of course he is all the better pleased. It used to be said that marriages were made in heaven; now many of them, among the well-to-do middle classes, are made in the hotels of the marine paradises between Scarborough and Torquay.

CHAPTER XVIII.

66

OLD AND NEW PROFESSIONS.

THE question as to what is to be done with our sons is daily becoming more difficult to answer. The struggle for subsistence is daily more severe; confidence is shaken in the timehonoured belief that patience and industry must pull through to a competence, and the odds against gaining a fortune are steadily lengthening. The 'professions" are overcrowded, and if there are still prizes to be won, the profits have in many cases diminished. High Church preferments, for example, are now by no means necessarily synonymous with opulence, and many an incumbent of what used to be a wealthy living is painfully practising the apostolic virtue of poverty. Something similar might be said of certain branches of the law; and physic, although its fees and its aggregate gains have increased, is depressed in the markets by the mobs of medical students on promotion. The old-fashioned solicitors who