f a great
fortune. The name Hothampton soon vanished.

The local authorities of Bognor seem to be keenly alive to the value of
enterprise, for their walls are covered with instructions as to what may
or may not be done in the interests of cleanliness and popularity; a new
sea-wall has been built; receptacles for waste paper continually
confront one, and deck chairs at twopence for three hours are
practically unavoidable. And yet Bognor remains a dull place, once the
visitor has left his beach abode--tent or bathing box, whichever it may
be. It seems to be a town without resources. But it has the interest,
denied one in more fashionable watering-places, of presenting old and
new Bognor at the same moment; not that old Bognor is really old, but it
is instructive to see the kind of crescent which was considered the last
word in architectural enterprise when our great-grandmothers were young
and would take the sea air.

[Sidenote: A POET ON HORSEBACK]

From Bognor it is a mere step to Felpham, a village less than a mile to
the east. Whether or not one goes there to-day is a matter of taste; but
a hundred years ago to omit a visit was to confess one's-self a boor,
for William Hayley, the poet and friend of genius, lived there, and his
castellated stucco house became a shrine. At that day it seems to have
been no uncommon sight for the visitor to Bognor to be refreshed by the
spectacle of the poet falling from his horse. According to his
biographer, Cowper's Johnny of Norfolk, Hayley descended to earth almost
as often as Alice's White Knight, partly from the high spirit of his
steed, and partly from a habit which he never abandoned of wearing
military spurs and carrying an umbrella. The memoir of the poet contains
this agreeable passage: "The Editor was once riding gently by his side,
on the stony beach of Bognor, when the wind suddenly reversed his
umbrella as he unfolded it; his horse, with a single but desperate
plunge, pitched him on his head in an instant.... On another occasion,
on the same visit ... he was tost into the air on the Downs, at the
precise moment when an interested friend whom they had just left, being
apprehensive of what would happen, was anxiously viewing him from his
window, through a telescope." Those who look through telescopes are
rarely so fortunate. It is odd that Hayley, a delicate and heavy man
suffering from hip-disease, should have taken so little hurt. Although
he had a covered passage for