ousands, and never fails.

When the last net was overboard the master said, "Seas all!" and then
lowered the foremast and laid to the wind. If he were to say, "Last
net," he would expect never to see his nets again.

[Sidenote: BRIGHTON'S FAIR DAUGHTERS]

"There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the
world," wrote Richard Jefferies some twenty years ago. "They are so
common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises, and
good-looking women who would be admired in other places pass by without
notice. Where all the flowers are roses you do not see a rose." (Shirley
Brooks must have visited Brighton on a curiously bad day, for seeing no
pretty face he wrote of it as "The City of the Plain.") Richard
Jefferies, who lived for a while at Hove, blessed also the treelessness
of Brighton. Therein he saw much of its healing virtue. "Let nothing,"
he wrote, "cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which
fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach; the foam runs up and
wets them, almost before it can slip back, the sunshine has dried them
again. So they are alternately wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing
light, bright clear air, dry as dry--that describes the place. Spain is
the country of sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in
England, a Seville."

[Sidenote: THE PAVILION]

The principal inland attraction of Brighton is still the Pavilion, which
is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and
fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney
Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist,
saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that
St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett in his
rough and homely way also said something to the point about the Prince's
pleasure-house: "Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet
and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk
turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches
long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put
the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips
of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the
corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the
crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and
others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to