Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/30

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BRIXTON.
27

I would not like to make too nice an inquisition as to how long he remained so!"[1]




We went down to the beach for a good view of Black Gang Chine, a wild, grand-looking place, with masses of sandstone of different strata, variously coloured, and rising to an elevation of some three hundred feet above the sea. Here Captain Hall, with his happy young people, again joined us, to part again immediately; they to walk to Chale, and we to rejoin R. at the inn, where, for walking into the house and out of it, we paid a fee to a waiter of an aged and venerable aspect, accurately dressed in a full suit of black, and looking much like one of our ancient Puritan divines setting off for an "association."

As we approached Brixton, the girls and myself alighted to walk, that we aught see this enchanting country more at leisure. I cannot give you an idea of the deliciousness of a walk here between the lovely hedges all fragrance, the air filled with the melody of birds, and the booming of the ocean

  1.  The following epitaph amused me: so like our own Puritan elegiac poetry. "To the memory of Charles Dixon, Smith and Farrier.

    "My sledge and hammer lie reclined,

    My bellows too have lost their wind,

    My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd,

    My vice all in the dust is laid;

    My coal is spent, my iron gone,

    My last nail's driven—my work is done!"