Modern Yarmouth. 21 



above other towns within my knowledge, it moves most 

 slowly with the galloping times, and because, if you take it 

 at the proper time and that is not in what the common 

 world would call its " season " it still retains that ancient 

 and fish-like smell which so admirably becomes it. Those 

 " rows," to the number of one hundred and fifty, which 

 Dickens in his own happy manner likened to the bars of a 

 gridiron, were surely made expressly for the reception of 

 kippers, the development of red soldiers, and the due 

 honouring of a superfine bloater, made to hold in lingering 

 embrace the perfume of cured and curing fish, and thereby 

 to cut off from the inhabitants the remotest chance of pre- 

 tending that they do not owe their fame to, and keep up 

 their existence by, the delicious and plentiful little clupea 

 harengus. 



Once upon a time* I took the reader to sea with the 

 herring fleet, and brought him, after one night's absence from 

 his feather bed, safely ashore, with a profitable cargo of 

 silver-sided fish. On this occasion we may confine ourselves 

 entirely to Yarmouth, albeit these November days are dark 

 and drear and short. All the summer visitors, the seaside 

 holiday-makers, have deserted the lodging-houses. The 

 beach, so lively and crowded during the dog-days, is mostly 

 left to local children and native dogs. Yarmouth, in short, 

 is itself again, and wholly given up to the harvest which the 

 bounteous ocean invites it to come and win in the teeth of 

 howling gales and foaming seas. Nobody, I presume, who 

 is not a gross partisan, would venture to say that Yarmouth 

 is the kind of town a photographer in search of the beauti- 

 ful would make the subject of views for an art-album or 

 patent stereoscope. 



* "Waterside Sketches," pp. 188-206. 



