aintance with my old friend Ocean," he wrote, "and
I find his bosom as pleasant a pillow for one's head in the morning as
his daughters of Paphos could be in the twilight. I have been swimming
and eating turbot and smuggling neat brandies and silk handkerchiefs,
and walking on cliffs and tumbling down hills, and making the most of
the _dolce far niente_ of the last fortnight." Thomas Hood spent his
honeymoon in the town about a decade later. Garrick, while staying at
East Cliffe House, planted in the garden a slip from Shakespeare's
mulberry-tree.

West of Hastings, and now merging into it, is the town of St. Leonards.
It was founded in 1828 by a Mr. Burton, and took its name from the
sixth-century hermit after whom the well-known forest and a number of
churches round about were called. Here, at St. Leonards, Thomas
Campbell, the poet, lived, and his well-known "Address to the Sea",
commencing: "Hail to thy face and odours, glorious Sea!" was inspired
by the view from this point. If ever the town needed a testimonial it
could scarcely find better than the following passage from Theodore
Hook: "From the meditation in which he was absorbed, Jack [Bragg] was
roused upon his arrival at the splendid creation of modern art and
industry, St. Leonards, which perhaps affords one of the most beautiful
proofs of individual taste, judgment and perseverance that our nation
exhibits. Under the superintendence of Mr. Burton, a desert has become
a thickly peopled town. Buildings of an extensive nature and most
elegant character rear their heads where but lately the barren cliffs
presented their sandy fronts to the storm and wave, and rippling stream
and hanging groves adorn the vale which a few years since was a sterile
and shrubless ravine." But perhaps the eulogy must not be taken too
seriously.

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[Illustration: HASTINGS AND ST. LEONARDS FROM THE CASTLE]

West of Hastings, and now merging into it, is the town of St. Leonards,
"the splendid creation of modern art and industry. Buildings of an
extensive nature and most elegant character rear their heads where but
lately the barren cliffs presented their sandy fronts to the storm and
wave."

(_See page 16_)

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Taken together, Hastings and St. Leonards form a typical modern
watering-place,--with the quieter portion to the west, as i