ter) on the real sea with any
accommodation for visitors, became in point of fact the earliest London
seaside resort. It was, if not the first place, at least one of the
first places in England to offer to its guests the perilous joy of
bathing machines, which were inaugurated here about 1790.

With the introduction of steamers Margate's fortune was made. Floods of
Cockneydom were let loose upon the nascent lodging-houses. Then came
the London, Chatham and Dover, and South Eastern Railways, and with
them an ever-increasing inundation of good-humoured cheap-trippers. The
Hall-by-the-Sea and other modern improvements and attractions followed.
Like the rest of Thanet, Margate has now become a mere suburb of
London, and what it resembles at the present day a delicate regard for
the feelings of the inhabitants forbids me to enlarge upon. I will
merely add that the recognized modern name of Margate is an
etymological blunder, due to the idea immortalized in the borough
motto, "Porta maris, Portus salutis," that it means Door of the Sea.
The true word is still universally preserved on the lips of the local
fisher-folk, who always religiously call it either Meregate or Mergate.

Ramsgate, a much more attractive and enjoyable centre, rich in
excursions to points of genuine interest, dates somewhat later. It
first came into note about the beginning of the eighteenth century,
when it did a modest trade with the Levant and the Black Sea, or, as
contemporary English more prettily phrases it, 'with Russia and the
east country.' In 1750 the first pier was built, as a national work,
mainly to serve as a harbour of refuge for ships caught in gales off
the Downs. The engineer was Smeaton, and he succeeded in creating an
artificial harbour of great extent, which has lasted substantially up
to the present time. This new port, rendered safer by the enlargement
in 1788, made Ramsgate at once into an important seafaring town, the
capital of the Kentish herring trade, alive with smacks in the busy
season. The steamers did it less good at first than they did to
Margate; but the completion of the two railways, and the building of
the handsome extensions on the east and west cliffs, turned it at once
into a frequented watering-place. It is the fashion nowadays rather to
laugh at Ramsgate. Marine painters know better. Few harbours are
livelier with red and brown sails; few coasts more enjoyable than the
cliff walk looking across towards the Goodw