nted in that city of lodging-houses. These mansions have
bow-windows in front, bulging out with gentle prominences, and
ornamented with neat verandahs, from which you can behold the tide of
humankind as it flows up and down the Steyne, and that blue ocean over
which Britannia is said to rule, stretching brightly away eastward and
westward. The chain-pier, as every body knows, runs intrepidly into the
sea, which sometimes, in fine weather, bathes its feet with laughing
wavelets, and anon, on stormy days, dashes over its sides with roaring
foam. Here, for the sum of twopence, you can go out to sea and pace this
vast deck without need of a steward with a basin. You can watch the
sun setting in splendour over Worthing, or illuminating with its rising
glories the ups and downs of Rottingdean. You see the citizen with his
family inveigled into the shallops of the mercenary native mariner, and
fancy that the motion cannot be pleasant; and how the hirer of the
boat, otium et oppidi laudat rura sui, haply sighs for ease, and prefers
Richmond or Hampstead. You behold a hundred bathing-machines put to sea;
and your naughty fancy depicts the beauties splashing under their
white awnings. Along the rippled sands (stay, are they rippled sands
or shingly beach?) the prawn-boy seeks the delicious material of your
breakfast. Breakfast-meal in London almost unknown, greedily devoured in
Brighton! In yon vessels now nearing the shore the sleepless mariner
has ventured forth to seize the delicate whiting, the greedy and foolish
mackerel, and the homely sole. Hark to the twanging horn! it is the
early coach going out to London. Your eye follows it, and rests on the
pinnacles built by the beloved GEORGE. See the worn-out London roue
pacing the pier, inhaling the sea air, and casting furtive glances under
the bonnets of the pretty girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the
bilious lawyer, escaped for a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the
fresh breezes before he goes back to breakfast and a bag full of briefs
at the Albion! See that pretty string of prattling schoolgirls, from the
chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed little maiden just toddling by the side
of the second teacher, to the arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and
conscious of her beauty, whom Miss Griffin, the stern head-governess,
awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a telescope and marine jacket; young
Nathan and young Abrams, already bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling
the sun in orienta