Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

One summer's evening, when I had been for many hours gratifying myself with exploring these sweet romantic scenes, I sat me down on the root of an old tree, and wrote the following lines:

Ye that groan beneath the weight
Of dissipation, pride, and state,
Condemn'd to walk through life's parade,

At rout, or drum, or masquerade;
Ye that fain would pleasure find,

Led by fortune, ever blind,
Come, and sit along with me;
Come, and taste tranquillity.

Or, if chac'd by sallow Care,
Would you shun the hag Despair;
Would you cheerful health restore
When advice can do no more;
Seek the fresh reviving breeze,
Or the fanning of the trees;
Come, and sit along with me;
Come, and taste tranquillity,

Ye

[blocks in formation]

Ye that languish to regain

A breaking heart, or racking brain,
Driv'n, by fortune or by fate,
To a wild or frantic state;
Or, moping, wander like a loon,
Dreading oft the wayward moon;
Come, and sit along with me;
Come, and taste tranquillity.

Tunbridge-Wells are thirty-five miles from London, lying partly in Kent and partly in Sussex; the posttowns on that road are Bromley, Sevenoaks, and Tunbridge-town, the latter is five miles from the Wells.

BRIGHTON,

BRIGHTON,

OTHERWISE

BRIGHTHELMSTONE.

BRIGHTON has less diversity than Margate, and less tranquillity than Tunbridge-Wells, but I believe it is visited by more nobility than either of the foregoing places. This may proceed from the Heir Apparent making it his summer residence, for the eagles and the hawks for ever gather round the highest rocks.

Brighton is like a beggar's coat, which, as he grows fat by being too well fed by his neighbours, becomes too little for him; so that, in order

to

to make it fit the better, he sometimes finds occasion to let it out, and patches it with different cloths, which, being mostly new, disgrace the old. It was formerly an insignificant fishing town; the natives were merely amphibious, and to this day they retain much of their original quality.

There is nothing here to arrest the traveller's attention but the Prince's pavilion, which is more a temporary conveniency for the summer than a splendid object of admiration.

The houses in general are alternately high and low, new and old, handsome and ugly, through the town. There is a baldness in the whole, and nothing to relieve the eye, take it in whatsoever point of view you may.

The

[ocr errors]

The sea presents one continued sameness, divested of the almost-perpetual moving scene which shews itself to the spectator at Margate, from the multiplicity of shipping of all descriptions, sailing so near the shore, to and from the Downs, and to different parts of the coast. At Brighton you have only a few fishing boats, or now and then a vessel of consequence will present itself to you in the Offing, at four or five leagues distance, which is descried only by the aid of a telescope, and then you scarcely are able to ascertain her rate or burthen, or to what kingdom she may belong.

The water is strongly impregnated with the particles of salt, very pure and clear, but it is often comfortless, and sometimes dangerous to the ba

ther;

« ÎnapoiContinuă »