leasure resort. The
ordinary visitor to Hastings is, however, more interested by the caves
in the hill below, originally made by diggers of sand and afterwards
used by smugglers.

Before branching out from Hastings into the country proper I might
mention two neighbouring points of pilgrimage. One is Hollington Rural
church, on the hill behind the town, whither sooner or later every one
walks. It is a small church in the midst of a crowded burial ground, and
it is difficult to understand its attraction unless by the poverty of
other objectives. I should not mention it, but that it is probably the
church to which Charles Lamb, bored by Hastings itself, wended his way
one day in 1825. He describes it, in terms more fitting to, say,
Lullington church near Alfriston, or St. Olave's at Chichester, in no
fewer than three of his letters. This is the best passage, revelling in
a kind of inverted exaggeration, as written to John Bates Dibdin, at
Hastings, in 1826:--"Let me hear that you have clamber'd up to Lover's
Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely
too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring
upon the shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left
to itself. One cock-boat spoils it. A sea mew or two improves it. And go
to the little church, which is a very protestant Loretto, and seems
dropt by some angel for the use of a hermit, who was at once parishioner
and a whole parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in
your portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been
erected in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or
three first converts; yet hath it all the appertances of a church of the
first magnitude, its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral
in a nutshell. Seven people would crowd it like a Caledonian Chapel. The
minister that divides the word there, must give lumping pennyworths. It
is built to the text of two or three assembled in my name. It reminds me
of the grain of mustard seed. If the glebe land is proportionate, it may
yield two potatoes. Tythes out of it could be no more split than a hair.
Its First fruits must be its Last, for 'twould never produce a couple.
It is truly the strait and narrow way, and few there be (of London
visitants) that find it. The still small voice is surely to be found
there, if any where. A sounding board is merely there for ceremony. It
is secure from e