he had no prudence—­would have shortened it for him.  At the ‘Retreat,’ as it is called, among other native delicacies, they give you fresh char cooked to a turn.  I like to think that this was the fish that Monte Christo had sent him in a tank to Paris on the occasion of a certain banquet; but all the wealth of the Indies could not have accomplished that; the char (in spite of its name) does not travel.

One more reminiscence of country inns; and, though I have more of them in the picture-gallery of my memory, I have done.  I conjure up an ivy-covered dwelling, long roofed but low, and sheltered by a lofty hill.  Its situation is quite solitary, and, save for the cry of the seagull, there reigns about it an unbroken silence.  It is on the very highway of the world, but the road is noiseless, for it is the sea.  From the windows, all day long, we can watch the ships pass by that carry the pilgrims of the earth, for their freight is chiefly human.  It is here ’the first ray glitters on the sail that brings our friends up from the under world, and the last falls on that which sinks with all we love below the verge.’  Even at night there is no cessation to this coming and going; only, a red light or a white, and the distant strokes of a paddle-wheel in the hush of the moonless void are then the sole signs of all this motion.  What hopes and fears contend in unseen hearts under those moving stars!  Is it nothing to have the opportunity to watch them from the ivied porch of the ‘Outlook,’ and to welcome the thoughts they arouse within us?  On land, too, there are stars, not made in heaven, but their shining is intermittent.  As I lie in my bed I can see the great revolving light on the farthest point of rock that juts to sea.  That is the ‘Outlook’s’ watchman, not of much use to it, indeed, in a practical way, but imparting a marvellous sense of guardianship and security.

The chief means of amusement at inns of this kind is supplied by science in the telescope.  You note through it all that comes and goes, and after a day or two can tell-for yourself whither each stately ship is bound, or whence it comes.  At the ‘Outlook’ the food is plain, but good; the prawns in particular (which the young people, by-the-bye, can catch for themselves) are of an exquisite flavour, and in size approach the lobster.  Twice a week for four hours this earthly Paradise is as a town taken by assault and given over to pillage.  An excursion steamer stops at the little pier and discharges a cargo of excursionists.  But those to whom the happiness of their fellow-creatures is intolerable can withdraw themselves at these seasons to the neighbouring Downs and Bays, and on their return they will find peace with folded wing sitting as before on the ‘Outlook’s’ flagstaff.