SUNNY BRIGHTON. 67 



scientific altar. Buy them horses to ride, if you want 

 them to enjoy good health and sound constitutions. 

 Nothing like horses for women. Send the professors 

 to Suakim, and put the girls on horseback. Whether 

 Brighton grows handsome girls, or whether they 

 flock there drawn by instinct, or become lovely by 

 staying there, is an inquiry too difficult to pursue. 



There they are, one at least in every group, and you 

 have to walk, as the Spaniards say, with your beard 

 over your shoulder, continually looking back at those 

 who have passed. The only antidote known is to get 

 married before you visit the place, and doubts have 

 been expressed as to its efficacy. In the south-coast 

 Seville there is nothing done but heart-breaking ; it 

 is so common it is like hammering flints for road- 

 mending; nobody cares if your heart is in pieces. 

 They break hearts on horseback, and while walking, 

 playing tennis, shopping — actually at shopping, not 

 to mention parties of every kind. No one knows 

 where the next danger will be encountered — at the 

 very next corner perhaps. Feminine garments have 

 an irresistible flutter in the sea-breeze ; feathers 

 have a beckoning motion. No one can be altogether 

 good in Brighton, and that is the great charm of it. 

 The language of the eyes is cultivated to a marvellous 

 degree ; as we say of dogs, they quite talk with their 

 eyes. Even when you do not chance to meet an 

 exceptional beauty, still the plainer women are not 

 plain like the plain women in other places. The 

 average is higher among them, and they are not so 

 irredeemably uninteresting. The flash of an eye, the 

 shape of a shoulder, the colour of the hair — something 



