the Ichthyosaurus that now astonishes
the visitor to the Natural History Museum in Kensington.

In Pound Street is an auxiliary church that in 1884 was converted out
of a stable into the present beautiful and uncommon little building.
Of particular merit are the fine tapestries and the altarpiece of
Venetian mosaics. In Church Street stands an old house once belonging
to the Tuckers, merchants and benefactors of the town. It is now named
Tudor House and is really of that date, although its exterior hardly
looks its age. The Assembly Rooms at the end of Broad Street mark the
time when Lyme was starting upon a career of fashion. In the new Town
Hall erected on the old site to commemorate the first Victorian
Jubilee is an ancient door from the men's prison, and a grating from
the women's quarters, let into the wall; in the Old Market stands an
ancient fire engine and the stocks, removed here from the church. Near
by is the "Old Fossil Shop" devoted to the sale of fossils and fish,
as quaint a combination of trades as one could imagine. The old houses
around the Buddle are of dark and mysterious aspect. This part of the
town has always had a romantic air, here and there slightly flavoured
with squalor, though of late, especially about the course of the
river, improvements have effected a change. Curious customs of great
antiquity such as the Saxon Court Leet and the Court of Hustings, a
copy of a London civic institution dating from the first charter of
the town, have continued to present times.

The other famous girl of Lyme, besides Mary Anning, was Jane Austen,
who lived with her parents at Bay Cottage, the white house near the
harbour. Here it is supposed that _Persuasion_ was written. Captain
Coram, the bluff seaman and tender-hearted philanthropist who spent
his small fortune on the Foundling Hospital, and. Sir George Somers,
who colonized the Bermudas, were both local worthies. The latter died
in the West Indies, but his body was brought home to Dorset and buried
at Whitchurch Canonicorum.

The beautiful coast west of the Cobb is described in the next chapter,
but mention must be made of the Landslip Walk. Several falls of the
cliff, here resting on a precarious foundation of sand and blue has
clay, have from time to time occurred and have produced this wide
tract of broken and tumbled ground, only to be equalled in its
picturesque confusion by the better known Undercliff in the Isle of
Wight. The greatest "slip"