at rather an early breakfast hour, and set off very punctually,
it was so much past noon before the two carriages, Mr Musgrove's coach
containing the four ladies, and Charles's curricle, in which
he drove Captain Wentworth, were descending the long hill into Lyme,
and entering upon the still steeper street of the town itself,
that it was very evident they would not have more than time
for looking about them, before the light and warmth of the day were gone.

After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the inns,
the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly
down to the sea. They were come too late in the year for any amusement
or variety which Lyme, as a public place, might offer. The rooms
were shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family
but of the residents left; and, as there is nothing to admire
in the buildings themselves, the remarkable situation of the town,
the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb,
skirting round the pleasant little bay, which, in the season,
is animated with bathing machines and company; the Cobb itself,
its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful
line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what
the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be,
who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme,
to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its neighbourhood,
Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country,
and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs,
where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot
for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation;
the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all,
Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where
the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth,