own description of Broadstairs was, in part, as follows:

"Half awake and half asleep, this idle morning in our sunny window on the
edge of a chalk cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are
a faithful resorter, we feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture.

"The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as still
before us as if they were sitting for the picture. But the ocean lies
winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion--its glassy waters scarcely
curve upon the shore--the fishing-boats in the tiny harbour are all
stranded in the mud--our two colliers (our watering-place has a maritime
trade employing that amount of shipping) have not an inch of water within
a quarter of a mile of them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like
faint fish of an antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and
rings, undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber defences
against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled seaweed
and fallen cliff.

"In truth, our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and dry
by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we must
reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little semi-circular
sweep of houses tapering off at the end of the wooden pier into a point in
the sea, was a gay place, and when the lighthouse overlooking it shone at
daybreak on company dispersing from public balls, is but dimly traditional
now. There is a '_bleak chamber_' in our watering-place which is yet
called the Assembly 'Rooms.'...

"... We have a church, by the bye, of course--a hideous temple of flint,
like a great petrified haystack....

"Other population than we have indicated, our watering-place has none.
There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the sunlight with
the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile shoemaker who wanders his
lonely life away among the rocks, as if he were looking for his
reason--which he will never find. Sojourners in neighbouring
watering-places come occasionally in flys to stare at us, and drive away
again.

"... And since I have been idling at the window here, the tide has risen.
The boats are dancing on the bubbling water: the colliers are afloat
again; the white-bordered waves rush in; the children--

"'Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back;'

the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and shining on the far
horizon; all the sea is spa