in respect to providing himself with lodgings, being often more convenient and moderate in their prices. The bathing is not so pleasant as at Margate and many other places, owing to the sudden tides and the short breakings of the sea, which often come with great impetuosity, and sometimes danger, to those who venture too far from the shore: many accidents have happened in this respect. I had the mortification some years ago to be one among many hundreds of spectators who saw the late unfortunate Mr. Bowers, tutor to the Earl of Glasgow, while he was bathing, drowned; a very amiable young gentleman, and a sound scholar; he was an excellent swimmer, but was too confident confident in his own abilities; for, while he was laving and amusing himself at a considerable distance from the beach, the sea-breaks overcame his strength, beat him almost to pieces against the shingles, and carried his body away into the wide ocean, where he sank; he was thrown up next day by the tide, at a little distance from the town. He was buried a few days after this accident, and followed to the grave by a great concourse of voluntary mourners, shewing an unfeigned grief, wetting their handkerchiefs with their tears, which issued from the heart as a tribute to his virtues, and actuated by the reflection of so melancholy a catastrophe. There There is a tolerable theatre here, and the performers are much upon a par with all other companies who perform at watering places. The Assembly-room has nothing to boast of in respect to elegance: there is some dancing, but the four aces trip it right hand and left with more agility and dexterity, and are more attended to, than the most celebrated gentleman of the pump. Scarborough is two hundred and thirty miles from London, and fortyfour from the city of York. While at the above place, I fortunately picked up, at a bookseller's shop, Ward's Antiquities of the County of York, who seems to be a very mo dest dest writer, but does not excel much in diction, nor is he very minute in respect to particulars. However, from what he says of Beverly-minster, a building little spoken of in the southern parts of England, I was excited to ramble about five and thirty miles out of my way, to gratify myself with a sight of it, for it lies near Hull, in a nook of Yorkshire. Mr. Ward says, "The Danes, it seems, had not totally ruined the mos nastry of St. John of Beverly; for we are told, that, in the year 1088, it was entirely destroyed by an accidental conflagration. But such was the piety of mankind, by degrees, in various times, and of different work, they raised it to an admirable form, and in an order the most magnificent and mat jestic. Its length from east to west was one hundred and eleven yards; from north to south about fifty-five; the breadth of those aisles being twenty-one, the height from the pavement to the highest cieling about twenty-two, the side-aisles eleven, and up to the two strong western towers sixty-six. Thus it remained in glory till its dissolution, which we are told was in the first year of K. Edward VI. by the power of an act made in the 26th year of his father's reign. After which, being abandoned and stripped of its land, all the gutters, contraforts, and battlements, fell into a lamentable decay. Its once-curiously painted windows were broken and rendered imperfect in several places. In short, so much was the building out of repair, that, in the year |