The Express.
London, England, 1868-08-22 00:00:00

• ,
of their wheezy and dyspeptic instruments; tits
ingenione Stroller whose toothless, ()lawless eat
submits to indignities from mice with pink eyes,
and to imults front birds of the canary tribe; the
cetnie mail who tradt•s upon his good looks, and
sing- dit t ce of more thanc equivocal interpretation
supplementing them %. Alt leers and smirks which
so straight to the hearts of the delioate-mintled
maidens and matrons standing by ; the hawkers of
the nastinesees known as brandy-bells and
Bonaparte's ribs ; the vendors of the famous
local ginger-beer; the acrobats in soiled
fleshings, and with fillets of grease about
their lank, long locks ; the donkey boys prod-
ding the unhappy beasts underthoir care ; the chil-
dren snaking sand-pies, and wading knee deep in the
surf—are all welded together in an indistinguish-
able and heterogeneous masa. The Ethiopians yell
and the Gentians play with a natural disregard for
each otlwr's interests. The various peripatetic
tradesmen are unceasing in their attentions, and
doge bark, men and women shout, and donkeys
bray until the deafened visitor is reminded of the
woes of Roo/mete Enraged Musician, and boats
a hasty retreat. For an hour before the mid-day
meal the sands are impassable. Every inch
of space between the pier and She new
railway station, and beyond it, is crammed. Some
of the stoutest people in England scorn to have
come to Ramsgate, and to be, by common consent,
rivalling each other in adiposity and dead. weight.
But the picture lacks refinement and variety.
Human life—with its endless hopes, and fears,
and interests, and weaknesses—is au over profit-
able study ; but at Ramsgate the colouring is too
coarse and uniform, and apparently only one
section of humanity is to be seen. It is all very
jolly—but it is the sort of jollity tin
uneducated savage might enjoy; and one
looks in vain for the refining influences of civilisa-
tion in the countenances, the sports, or the merri-
ment of the assembled crowds. Everyone is
supremely comfortable and self-satisfied ; but
common weaknesses seem exaggerated by the
general coarseness, and what is usual enough
at other seaside places gains an unpleasant force
and intensity here. flirting means romping, with
the genial concomitants of nudging and tickling ;
promenading is swaggering or elbowing; while
lounging, gosaipping, and playing haveall adistinc-
tive and disagreeable character of their own. Rams-
gate is no place just now for the sick, the euffering,
or the lover of quiet. A merry-go-round for the de-
crepid and old would be as appropriate m its
pier or sands for these; and those who re-
member the Gravesend of twenty years ago,
when "tea and shrimps" and a "blow on the river"
represented the annual excursion of thousands of
Londoners, will see in Ramsgate a duplicate of the
company of that favoured spot. For a great change
has come over the mode and means of
reaching the seaside from the metropolis.
It is easier and cheaper to reach Ramsgate or Mar-
gate from London-bridge than it was to got to
Gravesend or Teddington a few years since. The
people whose glimpses of country are confined
to Ilampetoad or Blackheath, and to whom the sea
is a mystery heard of but not seen, are becoming
fewer and fewer every year. Even CHARLES
Ms'rstews the elder would find it impossible to
raise a laugh among a modern audience by
depicting a man who could not believe water
to be salt. Steamers and railways have relegated
theseforms of ignorance to the dim past, and people
now make an annual excursion to the sea-side who
were content to spend their holiday afternoons at
suburban tea-gardens a generation back. This is
the lesson enforced by a visit to Ramegate Sands
in August ; and though the terraces and squares
on the two cliffs look full, no part of the town
seems to maintain the old distinction between it
and its neighbour on the other side of the North
Foreland.

So it seems until Margate itself is visited. This
done, and the existence of lower social strata iq
brought palpably home. To sit in your shirt-
sleeves and slippers, a public-house pot or a steam-
ing beaker of spirits and water by your side,
on the balcony of a centrally situated house,
would appear eccentric in any town in the king-
dom save that of the boy. But on Sunday
afternoon the long row of terraces and esplanades
in front of the sea hold a population attired
and occupied as we have said. Life on the
balcony appears, indeed, to comprise a variety of
striking situations at Margate. Love-making,
henpecking, goesipping, toast-giving and drink-
ing, are all pursued with engaging frankness
within those narrow limits, and in the full view of
the people walking or driving on the road
below. The other floors are also full,
and the window-sill is made to do duty here
as sideboard, dinner-table, and, in some in-
stances, as couch. To smoke strong tobacco, to
absorb potent drinks, to stare continuously
through opera glasses, and to indulge in broad
merriment and horse-play are the forms of amuse-
ment most in favour with Margate's guests. On
Sunday they are all being enjoyed with consi-
derable vigour ; and it needs a stroll on the
pier to convince a stranger that the entire popula-
tion are not so occupied at their temporary homes.
But the pier is like a cheaper Ramsgate Sands,
without the secular amusements of the week.
The crowding, the giggling, the jocularity, the
loud tones, and the fast colours are all there, un-
leavened and unrelieved. Everbody seems very
happy, except one poor woman who has fallen
down in a fit, and whose restoration is made
impossible by the pushing, gaping, jesting mob
who plant themselves round her in a compact
phalanx, refusing to make way, and treating
epilepsy as if it were a practical joke.
Margate is what it always has been,
and something more. Its boisterousness and
broad merriment have been long proverbial,
and these have been simply augmented by the
MUMS which have brought Ramsgate down to its
neighbour's old level. Neither could now give the
palm of retirement or exclusiveness to the other, and
both are as full, as noisy, and u roughly jovial
as the heartiest and coarsest merrymaker could
desire.

The shameless bathing exhibitions at both
places call for censure and suppression, but
the display at Broadatairs is so far in ex-
cess of both Ramsgate and Margate, that the
latter seem almost decent by comparison.
The sexes bathe together indiscriminately at Broad-
stairs. The shadowy pretence of a division be-
tween the two sets of machines kept up at the other
towns is utterly ignored here; and the result is
that !scenes occur for which a police-court
would be the legitimate de,ioilmset. We can only
account for the arrangements continuing in their
present state by the theory that Breatiataira has
been overlooked by the authorities. The con-
dition of things there cannot be fully described.
The bathing machines stand in the sea, their
entrances being gained by a plank from the shore,
which plank connects them together so that
they all communicate on the outside. They are
about three feet distant from each other, and
gentlemen or ladies take whichever becomes
vacant first, according to their turn. From
tl sir steps mon and women of all ages dabble