jolly, as round as the curves of their smacks drawn up on the beach
beneath them. They are of such that "sleep o' nights;" no anxious
ambition disturbs their placidity. No man in this world knows how to
absolutely do--nothing, like a fisherman. Sometimes he turns round,
sometimes he does not, that is all. The sun shines, the breeze comes up
the cliff, far away a French fishing lugger is busy enough. The boats on
the beach are idle, and swarms of boys are climbing over them, swinging
on a rope from the bowsprit, or playing at marbles under the cliff.
Bigger boys collect under the lee of a smack, and do nothing cheerfully.
The fashionable throng hastens to and fro, but the row leaning against
the railings do not stir.

Doleful tales they have to tell any one who inquires about the fishing.
There have been "no herrings" these two years. One man went out with his
smack, and after working for hours returned with _one sole_. I can never
get this one sole out of my mind when I see the row by the rails. While
the fisherman was telling me this woeful story, I fancied I heard voices
from a crowd of the bigger boys collected under a smack, voices that
said, "Ho! ho! Go on! you're kidding the man!" Is there much "kidding" in
this business of fish? Another man told me (but he was not a smack
proprietor) that L50, L70, or L80 was a common night's catch. Some
people say that the smacks never put to sea until the men have spent
every shilling they have got, and are obliged to sail. If truth lies at
the bottom of a well, it is the well of a fishing boat, for there is
nothing so hard to get at as the truth about fish. At the time when
society was pluming itself on the capital results attained by the
Fisheries Exhibition in London, and gentlemen described in the papers how
they had been to market and purchased cod at sixpence a pound, one
shilling and eightpence a pound was the price in the Brighton
fishmongers' shops, close to the sea. Not the least effect was produced