ins, the low shore by
Sandwich, the higher ground about Deal and Dover, and the dim white
line of Cape Blancnez in the distance.

Broadstairs, close by the lighthouse on the North Foreland (the Cantium
Promontorium of Roman geography), is still newer as a place of public
resort. But as a fishing village it dates back to the middle ages, when
the little chapel of "Our Lady of Bradstow" stood in the gap of the
cliffs, and was much addressed by anxious sailors rounding the
dangerous point after the silting up of the Wantsum. Ships as they
passed lowered their top-sails to do it reverence. Under Henry VIII. a
small wooden pier was thrown out to protect the fishing boats; and
about the same time, as part of the general scheme of coast defence
inaugurated by the king, a gate and portcullis were erected to close
the gap seaward, in case of invasion. The archway and portcullis groove
remain to this day, with an inscription recording their repair in 1795
by Sir John Henniker. The railway has turned Broadstairs into a minor
rival of Ramsgate and Margate and 'a favourite resort for gentry,'
where 'those who require quietness, either from ill health or a
retiring disposition,' says a local guide-book, may enjoy 'the united
advantages of tranquillity and seclusion.' Hundreds of retiring souls
indeed may be observed on the beach any day during the season, seeking
tranquillity in a game of cards, repairing their health with the
stimulus of donkey exercise, or soothing their souls in secret hour
with music sweet as love, discoursed to them by gentlemen in loose pink
suits and artificially imitated AEthiopian countenances.

Westgate is the very latest-born of these Thanet gates, a brand-new
watering-place, where every house proclaims the futility of the popular
belief that Queen Anne is dead, and where fashionable physicians send
fashionable patients to cure imaginary diseases by a dose of fresh air.
It has no history, for only a few years since it consisted entirely of
a coastguard station and three or four cottages: but it is interesting
as casting light on the nature of the revolution which has turned
Thanet inside out and hind part before, making the open sea take the
place of the Kentish mainland, and the railway to London that of the
silted Wantsum.

At the present day Thanet as a whole consists of two parts: the live
sea front, which is one long succession of suburban watering-places;
and the agricultural interior, including t