more than a topographical ticket by which its locality can be discovered.
I am not writing a guide book, but before I attempt to show that the Hastings of old had a very conspicuous flavour of letters, that it was literary without being pedantic, that its leaders were men and women of cultured originality without being eccentric, I may be permitted to note the — perhaps inevitable — fact that the extension of the inhabited area has not only substituted streets and houses for fields and woods, but has also robbed what remains of the adjacent country of its quaint and charming naturalness, The locality was almost unique along our south-eastern coast. The geological character of the hills and cliffs of the Wealden formation made it different from all our other southern points of attraction. It was as picturesque and as fascinating to the lover of nature as any locality on the coasts of Devonshire or Cornwall, while it also possessed what may be called a natural idiosyncrasy that differentiated it from all other localities. Much of this is, of course, indestructible; but modern art (?) has done its best, or worst, to obscure this idiosyncrasy as much as possible, The place is like a precious gem that has boon ruthlessly depreciated by bad cutting and tasteless pinchbeck setting. No attempt has been made — unfortunately no such attempt could have been expected from speculative builders and short-sighted lodging-house proprietors—at an artistic subordination of the development of the town to the natural features of the locality. The opportunity to make it a delight to the cultured eye is gone; and perhaps nothing could now renew that opportunity short of a destructive bombardment and a century or two of lying absolutely fallow.
Happily, the old castle stands at too great an elevation to be put out of sight by stuccoed villas; but it is cribbed and cabined on two of its three sides by buildings which obscure the natural picturesqueness of the bill, and the ruins almost appear to be perched upon the roofs of the houses. Recent generations, however, must not be held responsible for this, as the mischief was already done early in the century. It was also the carelessness of the Hastings people a hundred or more years ago that inflicted upon the town the loss of common right over the hill upon the southern point of which the castle stands, and the consequent necessity, a few years ago, of spending many thousands of public money to save the “Lady’s Parlour” and the breezy West Hill from the insatiable builder.
Is that quaint and evidently historical name of “ Lady's Parlour” still remembered in connection with the singular -
