Anonymous

“ Another view is of the western beach, with just eleven boats drawn up high and dry towards the cliffs in stiff and parallel shipshapedness; but not the shadow of a shade of a living object is to be seen. Better so, than suffer the saturnine visage of the obtrusive stranger to be introduced. But how unfair is this to Cromer! ”

“ The pictures are pleasing to the eye, and helpful to the mind that would, even en route, be forming some pleasant plans for a free and easy life in the immediate future, and rid itself of the black care that used to sit behind the horseman, but in our days boldly essays to take a seat cheek by jowl with the railway traveller, and to glare into his eyes. ”

“ Not that one looks, perforce, at the opposite side of the compartment for diversion from the disappointments of life, or anxious and schemeful thought, as we are whirled by the green and ochre and umber of the pastures and ploughed lands of the pleasant and undulating country through which the Great Eastern Railway runs. ”

“ From this digression I must go veritably backwards, as these crabs that have led me astray are erroneously said by some to do in their peregrinations among the mermaids at the bottom of the deep blue sea, and make my adieu under the trees that rise, as Ruskin says, “not like others against the sky in dots and knots, but in fringes.” ”

“ The refreshment-room of a conservatory type will tempt one to linger over the lemonade, certain to be demanded by the thirsting soul as a due reward at the finish of the climb, and which the pleasant toil renders unusually nectareous, the relish being chiefly due, without doubt, to the slight sudorific exertion, the most stimulative and wholesome condiment for food, and, as experience satisfactorily proves, for drinks too. ”

“ There I rested in sublime enjoyment, but let it be distinctly understood, not sub tegmine fagi: the fagus may be very well in a country where the p. 16chief object of daily life is to endure life by evading the pursuit, and dodging, as if one were a hunted brigand, the fierce light of a raging sun behind the trunks, or hiding with breathless haste in the stifling umbrage of such trees as may be within reach of the ever weary legs of a languid southerner. ”

“ These objects and actors on other but similar scenes, that both eye and hand had kept copies of, perhaps for years, were now transferred by the painter to his canvas “to improve the occasion” by giving life and interest to a spot—beautiful always, though at the time barren of incident—which in the process of years most often present such stirring aspects as he then depicted.
I recalled the admirable pictures of my, alas! deceased friend, when my eye fell on the photographs ranged on the sides of the railway carriage that bore me to Cromer last summer. ”

“ Such a-going upstairs in a carrying chair as meets the eye when the finger turns to the index of contents, if not a sad remembrancer of some sufferer near and dear, is distressingly suggestive of the ills that one’s own flesh may be heir to, and the numbness of leg resulting from long sitting is apt to be magnified by apprehension into creeping paralysis. ”

“ Many a paterfamilias would come out in clear detail as he lazily enjoys the piping tunes of peace without the rebuke from his beaming better-half, which he would scarcely escape at home at such an hour. ”

“ What a recuperative agent, too, is some interesting quest that prevents the wandering about in the invigorating air from being listless and wearisome, because aimless, as it too often is! Let the visitor be induced to engage in p. 14the daily and engrossing search for the best stock, not for the farm, nor the investment of capital, but for an aquarium, and the true balance of the brain will begin to be adjusted instanter. ”

“ If you are not afraid to risk some unpopularity in your newly-acquired domain by a certain number of evictions, without the aid of the battering ram, from the shell-cabins on your estate, a star-fish of moderate dimensions, and a peripatetic prying hermit-crab, will be interesting objects ”

“ But “want of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distrest.” What an important factor in the recruitment of health, and the retoning of the nervous system, is some light occupation for mind and fingers during the sundry hours of forced confinement, for various causes, pro tem., to one’s lodgings! ”

“ Now, as one who has for many a year resolutely sought, or made opportunity, to obey the annual prompting of nature to change his heaven—a feeling akin to the periodical impulse of winged bipeds to migrate—thus, and thus only, perhaps, maintaining in healthy vigour such power of mind and body as he has been endowed with, to a time of life when many shrink from the activities of muscular exertion, if they have not long ago abandoned pedestrian exploration and cycle tours, which the writer has not, let me back up the opinion of the faculty, as represented by Mr. ”