BIDEFORD,

APRIL 24. 1855.



GLAUCUS; OR, THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE.



You are going down, perhaps, by railway, to pass your usual six
weeks at some watering-place along the coast, and as you roll along
think more than once, and that not over-cheerfully, of what you
shall do when you get there. You are half-tired, half-ashamed, of
making one more in the ignoble army of idlers, who saunter about
the cliffs, and sands, and quays; to whom every wharf is but a
"wharf of Lethe," by which they rot "dull as the oozy weed." You
foreknow your doom by sad experience. A great deal of dressing, a
lounge in the club-room, a stare out of the window with the
telescope, an attempt to take a bad sketch, a walk up one parade
and down another, interminable reading of the silliest of novels,
over which you fall asleep on a bench in the sun, and probably have
your umbrella stolen; a purposeless fine-weather sail in a yacht,
accompanied by many ineffectual attempts to catch a mackerel, and
the consumption of many cigars; while your boys deafen your ears,
and endanger your personal safety, by blazing away at innocent
gulls and willocks, who go off to die slowly; a sport which you
feel to be wanton, and cowardly, and cruel, and yet cannot find in
your heart to stop, because "the lads have nothing else to do, and
at all events it keeps them out of the billiard-room;" and after