land, leaving a pleasant breadth of
green between itself and its destiny. At the breath of salt the larger
trees hang back, and turn their boughs up; but plenty of pretty shrubs
come forth, and shade the cottage garden. Neither have the cottage walls
any lack of leafy mantle, where the summer sun works his own defeat by
fostering cool obstruction. For here are the tamarisk, and jasmin, and
the old-fashioned corchorus flowering all the summer through, as well
as the myrtle that loves the shore, with a thicket of stiff young sprigs
arising, slow of growth, but hiding yearly the havoc made in its head
and body by the frost of 1795, when the mark of every wave upon the
sands was ice. And a vine, that seems to have been evolved from a
miller, or to have prejected him, clambers with grey silver pointrels
through the more glossy and darker green. And over these you behold the
thatch, thick and long and parti-coloured, eaved with little windows,
where a bird may nest for ever.

But it was not for this outward beauty that Widow Shanks, stuck to her
house, and paid the rent at intervals. To her steadfast and well-managed
mind, the number of rooms, and the separate staircase which a solvent
lodger might enjoy, were the choicest grant of the household gods. The
times were bad--as they always are when conscientious people think
of them--and poor Mrs. Shanks was desirous of paying her rent, by the
payment of somebody. Every now and then some well-fed family, hungering
(after long carnage) for fish, would come from village pastures or town
shambles, to gaze at the sea, and to taste its contents. For in those
days fish were still in their duty, to fry well, to boil well, and to
go into the mouth well, instead of being dissolute--as nowadays the
best is--with dirty ice, and flabby with arrested fermentation. In the
pleasant dimity-parlour then, commanding a fair view of the lively sea
and the stream that sparkled into it, were noble dinners of sole, and
mackerel, and smelt that smelled of cucumber, and dainty dory, and
pearl-buttoned turbot, and sometimes even the crisp sand-lance, happily
for himself, unhappily for whitebait, still unknown in London. Then,
after long rovings ashore or afloat, these diners came back with a new
light shed upon them--that of the moon outside the house, of the supper
candles inside. There was sure to be a crab or lobster ready, and a dish
of prawns sprigged with parsley; if the sea were beginning to get coo