and Nelson can hardly understand our southern
coast lying at the mercy of a naval power which
we have long known to be vastly inferior to us
at sea. And it is equally difficult to picture
these tranquil ports and inland villages, and
these breadths of pastoral uplands, where the
crops grow and ripen undisturbed, as the scene
of clamorous battle, rapine, and incendiarism.
The little village of Rottingdean, for instance
—who can fancy it in the hands of a savage
enemy? Of all quiet places it is surely
the quietest. The waves strike against the
cavernous white cliffs, and now and then the
south wind must come with a roar from sea;
but those are the only ungentle sounds it
knows. Go there on a Sunday morning, when
all the people are in the quaint old Norman
church, seated apart on a little knoll of rising
ground, and you may think it is the very
Sabbath of creation, such a balmy silence steeps
the houses and the billowy land beyond,
especially if it be about the harvest season, when
Nature seems to hush the babbling voices of the
spring and summer, and the winds themselves
are tranquil. A drowsy place, whose dwellings
have caught the ripened red of many vanished
summers; whose roofs are painted with the
rusty gold of lichens that have sprung from the
kisses of last century's rain and sun; whose
silvery-grey flint walls dividing field from field
are touched with the sunny flicker of invading
moss. An enchanted place, you might almost
say, haunted for ever by harmonies of winds and
waves, visited by delicate influences from sea
and land; in front a wide expanse of many-
tinted waters, and round about long slopes
of corn-bearing fields, across which, and up
the high green hills, and over the fair nestling
hollows, the chime of the church bells floated
this Sunday morning in undulating cadence;
hamlet calling to hamlet in that community of
worship. Who can think of the French pouring
like a tempest through this peaceful
nook?

But the centre of our South Coast memories
is certainly Hastings. We date a new epoch of
English history from that little town. The
great event connected with Hastings changed
our destinies as a country, modified our national
character, revolutionised our language, founded
our aristocratical system, and inaugurated the
long era of feudality. The chivalrous pageant
of our mediaeval annals takes its start from that
sea-side borough. When I observe the young
gentlemen in wide-awakes, and the young ladies
in cavalier hats, lounging on the beach, I feel
inclined to tell them that they are like Madeline
in the Eve of St. Agnes, who went to sleep "in
lap of legends old." They are frolicking and
flirting like so many infants in the lap of
venerable mother History. The younger ones,
when they go back to school, will have a more
vivid and personal idea of Norman William and
Saxon Harold from having trodden the ground
which felt the shock of their contending forces.
Wonderful is the magic which lies in actual
contact with memorable spots. Pericles is
less a dream to those who have seen the
Acropolis; and the Caesars live once more to
him who wanders among the ruins of Imperial
Rome. There are parts of Hastings which,
though undoubtedly much more modern than the
eleventh century, are yet old enough not to
contradict the sentiment of antiquity. The
town that existed at the time of the Conquest
has been almost entirely swallowed up by the
sea; but " the new town" is now in itself old—
at least, many parts of it are. Quitting the
more fashionable localities, and penetrating into
the back streets, you find yourself in a region
of ancient houses, reared on different levels, and
over-peering one another, like wizen old elf-men
playing at bo-peep; with pathways before them
so much higher than the road, and so utterly
unprotected by chains or posts, that, on going
home at night, you must look out sharp for your
neck; with bits of the old town wall breaking
in here and there in an utterly unreasonable
manner; with the ruins of the castle (which
has been decaying for the last six hundred years,
or more) on the summit of the West Hill; with
flint-built churches, scathed by the fire of the
French in centuries gone by, yet standing up
bravely, large, massive, and crumbling; and
with a background of craggy cliffs, like an
impending avalanche. A rough and angry coast
has Hastings; and the sea, time after time, has
eaten its way into the land, tearing down almost
the whole site of the original town, and
defying every attempt to reconstruct the pier
destroyed by a great storm in the early part
of Elizabeth's reign. The ruins of that pier
may still be seen at low water, and its
importance to the town, as forming a harbour of
refuge for merchants and fishermen, is testified
by a royal proclamation, bearing date the 31st
of October. 1578, wherein we read that since
the carrying away of the pier by the extreme
rage and violence of the sea, " the town is much
decayed, the traffique of merchants thither
forsaken, the fishing, by reason of the dangerous
landing, but little used, the riche and wealthy
men gone thence, and the poore men yet
remaining would gladly doe the like, if without
offence of our lawes they might be
elsewhere received, whereby our people are likely
to perishe, and our said port likely to be
subverted, and become desolate, or els the
people there by necessitie driven to commit
great and heynous offences, to the great
hindrance of the public weale, unlesse some
spedie remedie be for them provided." The
object of the proclamation was to empower
certain of the local gentry to collect voluntary
subscriptions for the construction of a new pier.
The attempt was made, and renewed over and
over again in Elizabeth's and subsequent reigns;
but the sea was too strong for the engineers, or
the subscriptions failed, or the commissioners
embezzled the funds, or some other unlucky
accident occurred, and frustrated the plan.
Thus Hastings, from having been a place of no
small commerce and of some political importance
(even possessing a mint in the days of Saxon