s into view first the sea, stretching
away into infinite silence and solitude, dotted over on sunny days with
pleasure-boats; and next, perpetually dashing along the league of
sea-borded highway, group after group of gay riding-parties of all ages
and both sexes--Spanish hats, feathers, and riding-habits--_amazones_,
according to the French classic title, in the majority. First comes Papa
Briggs, with all his progeny, down to the little bare-legged imitation
Highlander on a shaggy Shetland pony; then a riding-master in
mustachios, boots, and breeches, with a dozen pupils in divers stages of
timidity and full-blown temerity; and then again loving pairs in the
process of courtship or the ecstasies of the honeymoon, pacing or racing
along, indifferent to the interest and admiration that such pairs always
excite. Besides the groups there are single figures, military and civil,
on prancing thorough-bred hacks and solid weight-carrying cobs,
contrasted with a great army of hard-worked animals, at half-a-crown an
hour which compose the bulk of the Brighton cavalry, for horse-hiring
at Brighton is the rule, private possession the exception; nowhere else,
except, perhaps, at Oxford, is the custom so universal, and nowhere do
such odd, strange people venture to exhibit themselves "a-horseback." As
Dublin is said to be the car-drivingest, so is Brighton the
horse-ridingest city in creation; and it is this most healthy, mental
and physical exercise, with the summer-sea yacht excursions, which
constitute the difference and establishes the superiority of this marine
offshoot of London over any foreign bathing-place. Under French auspices
we should have had something infinitely more magnificent, gay, gilded,
and luxurious in architecture, in shops, in restaurants, cafes,
theatres, and ball-rooms; but pleasure-boat sails would have been
utterly unknown, and the horse-exercise confined to a few daring
cavaliers and theatrical ladies.

It is doubtless the open Downs that originally gave the visitors of
Brighton (when it was Brighthelmstone, the little village patronised by
the Prince, by "the Burney," and Mrs. Thrale) the habit of
constitutional canters to a degree unknown in other pleasure towns; and
the traditional custom has been preserved in the face of miles of brick
and stucco. With horses in legions, and Downs at hand, a pack of hounds
follows naturally; hares of a rare stout breed are plentiful; and the
tradesmen have been acute