bright sparkling Ellerbeck and Wheeldale
streams, and on the vivid greenery of the
whole of the valley of the Esk, a little
river which flows into the sea just where
the town of Whitby rises on its banks.

A queer old town, picturesque and
mediæval in many places, and foreign
looking;  with red roofs, and overhanging
windows, and quaint gable ends. With
streets so narrow as scarcely to permit the
passing of two vehicles simultaneously,
and a narrow strip of foot pavement made
of rough nobbly stones, with quaint signs
and odd inscriptions, and divers smells,
now horrible, now invigorating. With a
narrow bridge connecting the right and
left banks of the Esk, with a long line of
wharves, where the fishermen congregate,
and below which their boats, when not at
sea, are moored. With two long stone jetties
stretching far out into the sea, broad,
handsome, and massively built, each with a
lighthouse at its end. Towering over the old
town and perched on the top of the vast cliff,
behold the terraces, places, and crescents,
homes of gentility. Here is the large and
excellent Royal Hotel;  here the lodging-
houses for the reception of the visitors,
who are quiet, staid people, amongst whom
the clerical element predominates largely.
Shovel hats, episcopal aprons, and diaconal
gaiters are continually met with on the cliff
and on the sands, while the inferior orders
of clergy swarm plentiful as blackberries in
Sussex hedges. Some of the cloth being
off duty, endeavour to disguise their calling
by the assumption of mufti, consisting of
a black necktie and a soft wide-awake;
but the attempt is generally a failure.
Their expression, a mixture of resignation
to martyrdom, with an endeavour to enjoy
innocent worldly pleasure, is in itself
sufficient to betray them. If, however, the
pillars of the Establishment are anxious
for a little relaxation—and Heaven knows
how much many of them require it after
their hard labours in church and parish—
the ministers of other denominations, who
also favour Whitby as a place of
resort,  are "at it"  with lecture, prayer-
meeting, or discussion, morning, noon,
and night. Even at this moment the lame
crier halts under our window, and after a
prefatory performance on his hand-bell,
announces that " T'  Rayvrend Willum
Jockson, of Hoodthersfeäld will deleever
lacture to-night, at seven, at t' Primitive
Methodists' Chapel, Church-street—
soobject, The Slooggard."

The flirtation element, usually so strongly
developed at watering-places, is singularly
lacking among the visitors at Whitby.
There are plenty of pretty young ladies,
perhaps a little less flighty in demeanour
and a little more quiet in costume than
is now the fashion, but assuredly none
the less attractive for that, but there is
an alarming scarcity of young men. It
would be incongruous, not to say improper,
to bestow nods and becks on a bishop and
wreathed smiles on a dean, while Tyrolese
hats with wonderful feathers, and high
boots with nine buttons and impossible
heels, would be wasted on a curate with
nine children, or a Macclesfield manufacturer
of sixty-five. And of the ordinary
stamp of young men, of the pipe-smoking,
bathing, boating, picnic-suggesting,
dog-attended idler, there is scarcely a
specimen. So the girls walk about
mournfully in pairs, Calypsos mourning after
departed Ulysseses, or Heros waiting for
Leanders who never arrive, or sit knitting,
and reading novels on the benches, erected
in such charming positions in the nooks
and corners of the winding walks which
have been cut in the face of the cliffs;
pretty groups with lovely backgrounds,
which have often served as models for one
by whom the place was much frequented,
the only man whose pencil delineated with
kindly accuracy our modern society and
our seaside life—JOHN LEECH.

We have hitherto spoken of Whitby as
a watering-place, but it has a distinctive
peculiarity as a fishing-town, with a large
population dependent entirely on fishing.
They live, for the most part, in a place called
the "Craig," at the back of the harbour,
in wretched, old, tumble-down tenements,
built many years ago in the cliff-side, for
which they pay three or four pounds a year.
The fishing is of two kinds, the long-line and
the herring fishing, the latter being the most
important. The long-line fishing is carried
on in the off-season, say from October until
the end of June. Employed in this trade
are about five-and-twenty boats, here called
"cobles,"  flat-bottomed, and very sharp in
the bows, and each carrying three men.
Each man puts in two lines, so that there
are six lines to every boat, each with from
twenty to thirty score of hooks. They
catch ling, haddock, skate, halibut, and
occasionally turbot. In bad weather they
remain in shore, and catch codling. As
the cobles near shore, after their day's or
night's work, the men begin to take the
fish from the " crib," as they call the place
where it is first deposited, and toss it over