Modern, Yarmouth. 21 



above other towns within toy 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. 



