ing. I could abide to dwell with Meschek; to assort with
fisher-swains, and smugglers. There are, or I dream there are, many
of this latter occupation here. Their faces become the place. I like
a smuggler. He is the only honest thief. He robs nothing but the
revenue,--an abstraction I never greatly cared about. I could go out
with them in their mackarel boats, or about their less ostensible
business, with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor
victims to monotony, who from day to day pace along the beach,
in endless progress and recurrence, to watch their illicit
countrymen--townsfolk or brethren perchance--whistling to the
sheathing and unsheathing of their cutlasses (their only solace), who
under the mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated civil
warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, to show their
detestation of run hollands, and zeal for old England. But it is the
visitants from town, that come here to _say_ that they have been here,
with no more relish of the sea than a pond perch, or a dace might be
supposed to have, that are my aversion. I feel like a foolish dace
in these regions, and have as little toleration for myself here, as
for them. What can they want here? if they had a true relish of the
ocean, why have they brought all this land luggage with them? or why
pitch their civilised tents in the desert? 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 pretention. They come, because it is the fashion, and to
spoil the nature of the place. They are mostly, as I have said,
stockbrokers; but I have watched the better sort of them--now and
then, an honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of his
heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to taste the sea
breezes. I always know the date of their arrival. It is easy to see it
in their countenance. A day or two they go wandering on the shingles,
picking up cockleshells, and thinking them great things; but, in a
poor week, imagination slackens: they begin to discover that cockles
produce no pearls, and then--O then!--if I could interpret for the
pretty creatures (I know they have not the courage to confess it
themselves) how gladly would they exchange their sea