ht be supposed to have, that are my
aversion.... What can they want here? What mean these scanty
book-rooms--marine libraries as they entitle them--if the sea were, as
they would have us believe, a book to read strange matter in? What are
their foolish concert-rooms, if they come, as they would fain be
thought to do, to listen to the music of the waves? All is false and
hollow pretension. They come because it is the fashion, and to spoil
the nature of the place."

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[Illustration: HASTINGS CASTLE]

A fragment of the castle alone remains, grimly clinging to the edge of
the cliff.

(_See page 13_)

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As we stroll about the streets of Hastings of to-day, it is difficult,
nay, it is impossible, to conjure up the past, to people these hills
and dales with the ghosts of days long since gone. True, there is the
Castle ruin, grimly clinging to the edge of the cliff; else there is
little but aggressive modernity. Such haven as there is now gives
cause rather for ridicule than pride. Few, standing at the Albert
Memorial, could ever conceive that here in this Priory valley was at
one time the great Port, protected on the east by the Castle hill, on
the west by the White Rock, and flushed from the north by the Old Roar
River. Well might our old Sussex poet, James Howell, sing:

"Thou old sea-town, crouching beneath the rocks
Like a strong lion waiting for his prey!
Where are thy river, harbour, and the docks
In which the navy of Old England lay?
Why didst thou slumber, when in Pevensey Bay
The Normans' mighty host profaned our soil,
When thou, the Cinque-Port Queen, didst hold the key
Which locked the sea-gates of this freedom-isle?"

Who, standing towards the south of the old town, where now are those
black, bill-plastered structures famed as "the fishermen's huts", could
call to mind a great wall with a gate and portcullis defending the town
on the seaward side? Yet a writer as late as 1828 could say: "Hastings
was formerly defended, towards the sea, by a wall, which extended from
the castle cliff across the hollow in which the town lies, to the east
cliff.... A very small portion of this wall still exists, and may be
traced near the Bourne's mouth, where there was a portcullis or gate; a
considerable part of it is stated to have remained about forty ye