lies before their town, not
only has a new system of drainage and water been introduced, but a
register has been kept of the death-rate. From a return, published
by the Medical Officer of Health, it appears that the death-rate of
Hythe was 9.3 per 1000. Of sixty-three people who died in a year out
of a population of some four thousand, twenty-three were upwards of
sixty years of age, many of them over eighty. Perhaps the best
proof of the healthfulness of Hythe is to be found in a stroll
through the churchyard, whence it would appear that only very
young children or very old people are carried up the hill.

The difficulty about Hythe up to recent times has been the
comparative absence of accommodation for visitors. Its fame has
been slowly growing as The Families have spread it within their
own circles. But it was no use for strangers to go to Hythe, since
they could not be taken in. This is slowly changing. Eligible
building sites are offered, villas have been run up along the
Sandgate Road, and an hotel has been built by the margin of the
sea. When news reached the tower of the church that down on the
beach there had risen a handsome hotel, fitted with all the
luxuries of modern life, it is no wonder that the skulls turned
on each other and--as Longfellow in the "Skeleton in Armour" puts
it--

"Then from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seem to rise,
As when the northern skies
Gleam In December."

This is surely the beginning of the end. Having been endowed with a
railway which brings passengers down from London in a little over
two hours, Hythe is now dowered with an hotel in which they may dine
and sleep. The existence of the hotel being necessarily admitted,
prejudice must not prevent the further admission that it is
exceedingly well done. Architecturally it is a curiosity, seeing
that though it presents a stately and substantial front neither
stone nor brick enters into its composition. It is made entirely
of shingle mixed with mortar, the whole forming a concrete
substance as durable as granite. The first pebble of the new hotel
was laid quite a respectable number of years ago, the ceremony
furnishing an almost dangerous flux of excitement to the mariners
at the capstan. It has grown up slowly, as becomes an undertaking
connected with Hythe. But it is finished now, handsome without,
comfortable within, with views from the front stretching seawards
from Dungeness to Folkestone, and at the back across