" DEAR " DOVER 243 



and the more modern fortifications which cross the 

 Western Heights. 



Thy cliffs, dear Dover ! harbour and hotel ; 



Thy custom-house, with all its delicate duties; 

 Thy waiters running mucks at every bell ; 



Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties 

 To those who upon land or water dwell : 



And last, not least, to strangers uninstructed, 

 Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted. 



sang Byron. 



Turning, hoAvever, to a consideration of the two other 

 objects of Byron's outburst in Don Juan, the hotel and 

 the chffs, whether Shakespeare's CUff or those that 

 form so grand a rampart away towards the North 

 Foreland, Byron, we find, was justified in his choice of 

 Dovorian features for due commemoration. For the 

 cliffs, all that is to be said of the white walls of old 

 Albion has been long ago committed to print, and I do 

 not propose to attempt the saying of anything new 

 about them. As for the hotel of which the poet 

 speaks, it was probably the " Ship." The " Ship," 

 alas ! is gone, retired, as many of its landlords were 

 enabled to do, into private life, and the " long, long 

 bills " by which they earned rather more than a modest 

 competency are now produced elsewhere. The " Lord 

 Warden," which was not, unfortunately, built in 

 Byron's time, could probably have aflforded him 

 material for another stanza or two, for that huge 

 and supremely hideous building was celebrated at 

 one time for the monumental properties of the bills 

 presented to affrighted guests. Magnificent as were 

 the charges made by rapacious hosts elsewhere, they 

 all paled their ineffectual items before the sublime 

 heights attained by the account rendered to Louis 

 Napoleon when he stayed here. 



There are limits even to Princely-Presidential purses 

 and patiences, and few people cared to incur liabilities 

 at the " Lord Warden," which would have brought the 

 shadow of the Bankruptcy Court looming upon the 

 horizon. As for that most doughty of Lord Wardens 



