aves" a band, concealed in a bathing machine struck up
"God save Great George our King." Weymouth is in possession of a
keepsake of these stirring times in the statue of His Hanoverian
Majesty that graces(?) the centre of the Esplanade. It is to be hoped
that the town will never be inveigled into scrapping this memorial,
which for quaintness and unconscious humour is almost unsurpassed. A
subject of derisive merriment to the tripper and of shuddering aversion
for those with any aesthetic sense, it is nevertheless an interesting
link with another age and is not very much worse than some other
specimens of the memorial type of a more recent date. It has lately
received a coat of paint of an intense black and the cross-headed wand
that the monarch holds is tipped with gold. The contrast with the
enormous expanse of white base, out of all proportion to the little
black figure of the King, is strangely startling.

Not much can be said for St. Mary's, an eighteenth-century church in
St. Mary's Street which carries the Bloomsbury-by-Sea idea to excess.
The church has a tablet, the epitaph upon which seems quite unique in
the contradictory character it gives to the deceased:

UNDETH LIES YE BODY OF
CHRISR. BROOKS ESQ. OF JAMAICA
WHO DEPARD. THIS LIFE 4 SEPR. 1769
AGED 38 YEARS, ONE OF YE WORST OF MEN
FRIEND TO YE DISTRESD.
TRULY AFFECTD & KIND HUSBAND
TENDER PART. & A SINCR. FRIEND

The artist was unfortunate in his choice of abbreviations and
strangers are sometimes sorely puzzled; some, indeed, never guess that
"worst" has any connexion with "worthiest." The altar piece, difficult
to see on a dull day, was painted by Sir James Thornhill, a former
representative of the borough in Parliament. Sir Christopher Wren was
also for a time member for Weymouth, and portraits of both, together
with the Duke of Wellington and George III, adorn the Guildhall, a
good building at the west end of St. Mary's Street. The twin towns
were unique in their choice of members; in addition to the great
architect and famous painter, a poet--Richard Glover, author of
_Leonidas_--of no mean repute in his own day, was chosen and the
_original_ Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough,
also sat for Weymouth.

[Illustration: OLD WEYMOUTH.]

Within the Guildhall is to be seen a chest from the captured Armada
galleon and an old chair from Melcombe Friary, of which some poor
remnants existed in Maiden Street almost wit