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century, and the first quarter of the nineteenth, a position between the coaching inn and the mere beerhouse. This type of tavern is still very largely represented along the Dover Road, although the sailors who chiefly supported them are no longer seen tramping the highways between the seaports. They have, most of them, little arbours and trim

SAILORS' FOLLY. (After Julius Cæsar Ibbetson.)

gardens with skittle- and bowling-alleys, and here the sailor would sit and drink, spin yarns, or play at bowls; swearing strange oaths, and telling of many a hard-fought fight. If he had kindred company, there would be, I promise you, a riotous. time; for no schoolboy so frolicsome as Jack ashore, and hard-won wages and prize-money, got at the cost

of blood and wounds, he spent like water. Nothing was too expensive for him, nor, indeed, expensive enough, and if he was sufficiently fortunate to leave his landing-place with any money at all, he would very likely post up to town with the best on the road, holding, very rightly, that life without experiences was not worth the having. And of experiences he had plenty. He lived like a lord so long as his money lasted, and when he went

afloat again he was shipped in a lordly state of drunkenness; but once the anchor was weighed his was a slave's existence. Not that any word of his hardships escaped him; he took them as inseparable from a seaman's life; and, indeed, once the first rapture of his home-coming was over, the sea unfailingly claimed him again. And when ashore all his talk was of battles and storms; he damned Bonaparte, believed that one Englishman could thrash three "darned parleyvoos," despised land-lubbers, and sang "Hearts of Oak" with an unction that was

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truly admirable. His failings were only those of a free and noble nature, and it is very largely owing to his qualities of courage and tenacity that England stands where she is to-day. Let us not, however, decry, either directly or by implication, the sailors who now man our ships. They live in more peaceful times, and have neither the discomforts nor the hard knocks that were distributed so largely a hundred years ago; but, should occasion arise, they would doubtless approve themselves no whit less stalwart than their ancestors who wore pigtails, fought like devils; talked of Rodney, Nelson, Trafalgar, and the Nile, and finally disappeared somewhere about the time of the Battle of Navarino.

It was for the delight and to secure the custom of these very full-blooded heroes that these old taverns with signs so nautical and bowling-greens so enticing were planted so frequently on this very sea-salty road, and now that the humblest traveller finds it cheaper to pay a railway-fare than to walk, they look, many of them, not a little forlorn. As for the "Lord Nelson," at Chalk, I fear it lies too near London suburbs to last much longer. Already, on Bank Holidays, when the Cockney comes to Gravesend, literally in his thousands, riotous parties adventure thus far, and dance in the dusty highway to sounds of concertina and penny whistle. Their custom will doubtless enrich the place, and presently a gin-palace will be made of what is now a very romantic and unusual inn, grey and time-stained; its red roof-tiles thickly overgrown with moss and house-leek, and its gables bent and bowed with years.