'Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn,
Proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering-places!
Boys yet unbreech'd, and virgins yet unborn,
On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.'

The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets
still conspire to sing the praises of 'Old Ocean's bauble, glittering
Brighton.' Everybody remembers the stirring exhortation of Mortimer
Collins:

'If you approve of flirtations, good dinners,
Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten;
Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners,
Winter at Brighton!'

Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic.
Brighton in November, he says, 'is what one should remember':

'If spirits you would lighten,
Consult good Doctor Brighton,
And swallow his prescriptions and abide by his decree;
If nerves be weak or shaken,
Just try a week with Bacon;
His physic soon is taken at our London-by-the-Sea.'

Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the
Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr.
Locker's graceful 'Invitation to Rome' and 'The Reply' to it, from which
I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital:

'Some girls, who love to ride and race,
And live for dancing, like the Bruens,
Confess that Rome's a charming place--
In spite of all the stupid ruins!'

JAQUES IN LOVE.

What Jaques is in Shakespeare's pages most people know. In the very
first reference made to him he is described as 'melancholy,' and as
'weeping and commenting' upon a stricken deer. He has 'sullen fits,' we
read. He himself tells us he 'can suck melancholy out of a song.' He
protests that the banished Duke is 'too disputable' for him--that he
(Jaques) thinks of as many matters, but makes no boast of them. The
Duke, on his side, speaks of Jaques as 'compact of jars' (made up of
discords), and when Jaques offers to 'cleanse the foul body of the
infected world,' retorts on him that it would be a case of 'most
mischievous foul sin chiding sin,' Jaques having been himself a
notorious evil liver. To Orlando Jaques suggests that they should rail
at the world and their misery, while to Rosalind he confesses that he
loves melancholy better than laughing. ''Tis good to be sad and say
nothing.' He has, he says, a melancholy of his own, the result of his