IN PRAISE OF PINE-WOODS 79 



number were, in all probability, free to choose any 

 other part of England for a residence. The reason 

 for their building a " city to dwell in " on this long 

 line of Hampshire sand-cliff, must be sought in some 

 amenity of the site, not so obvious as to be perceived 

 at once, or Bournemouth would have been built long 

 ago, yet capable of 'appealing to the senses of the 

 greater number of those who visit it. The proximate 

 reason of any sea-side colony usually lies in some very 

 direct appeal to sentiment or convenience. Beachy Head 

 " made " Eastbourne, Brighton is London-by-the-Sea, 

 Hastings lies on a sunny shelf, Scarborough and 

 Whitby are the natural marine towns of the West 

 Riding, Ryde and Cowes are the yachting centres, 

 Ilfracombe and Lynton share the double beauties of 

 Exmoor, and of coast scenery unrivalled in the West. 

 Bournemouth can claim none of these special advan- 

 tages. The long line of yellow cliffs, with the distant 

 bastions of chalk precipice, Freshwater, and the 

 Needles on the east, and the pillared cliffs of St. Albans 

 Head to the west, beyond the wide blue waters of the 

 bay, give to the seaward view a breadth and simplicity 

 which grows upon the imagination. But it is not by 

 its coast, or even by the bright waters of its sand-paved 

 sea, which the wildest storm cannot discolour, that the 

 place prevails on those who visit it, to make there an 

 abiding home. It is the whispering of the deep pine- 

 wood that lines the land, and not the voices of the sea, 

 which they hear and obey. The pine-wood of Bourne- 

 mouth is to the plantations of the sand country what 



