It has not even fishing boats, for lack of place to moor
them in. It is on the greatest water highway of the world, and yet
has no part in its traffic. Standing on the beach you may see day
after day a never-ending fleet of ships sailing up or down as the
wind blows east or west. But, like the Levite in the parable, they
all pass by on the other side. Hythe has nothing to do but to stand
on the beach with its hands in its pockets and lazily watch them.

Thus cut off from the world by sea, and by land leading nowhere in
particular except to Romney Marshes, Hythe has preserved in an
unusual degree the flavour of our earlier English world. There have
indeed been times when endeavour was made to profit by this
isolation. As one of the Cinque Ports Hythe has since Parliaments
first sat had the privilege of returning representatives. In the
time of James II. it seems to have occurred to the Mayor (an
ancestor of one of the members for West Kent in a recent
Parliament), that since a member had to be returned to Parliament
much trouble would be saved, and no one in London would be any the
wiser, if he quietly, in his capacity as returning officer,
returned himself. But some envious Radical setting on the opposite
benches, was too sharp for him, and we find the sequel of the story
set forth in the Journals of the House of Commons under date 1685,
where it is written--

"Information given that the Mayor of Hythe had returned himself:
Resolved by the House of Commons that Mr. Julius Deedes, the Mayor,
is not duly elected. New writ ordered in his stead."

Hythe is a little better known now, but not much. And yet for many
reasons its acquaintance is worth forming. The town itself, lying
snugly at the foot of the hill crowned by the old church, is full
of those bits of colour and quaintnesses of wall and gable-end
which good people cross the Channel to see. In the High-street there
is a building the like of which probably does not anywhere exist. It
is now a fish-shop, not too well stocked, where a few dried herrings
hang on a string under massive eaves that have seen the birth and
death of centuries. From the centre of the roof there rises a sort
of watch-tower, whence, before the houses on the more modern side of
the street were built, when the sea swept over what is now
meadow-land, keen eyes could scan the bay on the look out for
inconvenient visitors connected with the coastguard. When the sea
prevented Hythe honestly earni