'A lady who once wrote a book, And one of whom a book's been written... One blonde whose fortune is her face, And one whose face caught her a fortune.' As for the daily round: 'We dance, we flirt, we shoot, we ride, Our host's a veritable Nimrod: We fish the river's silver tide,' and so on. There are, of course, the county balls, and the fancy balls, and the private theatricals, and what not, all of them celebrated by the inevitable Praed. It was at the county ball that he saw 'the belle of the ballroom': 'There, when the sounds of flute and fiddle Gave signal sweet in that old hall Of hands across and down the middle.' It was to the county ball, as well as to the theatricals at Fustian Hall, that Praed's 'Clarence' was so prettily invited. As for fancy balls: 'Oh, a fancy ball's a strange affair! Made up of silks and leathers, Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair, Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers.' Of inland watering-places, Bath and Cheltenham have been perhaps most often poetized. Bath found its _vates sacer_ in the author of the 'New Bath Guide'; it has rarely found one since; its glories have virtually departed. It was at Cheltenham-- 'Where one drinks one's fill Of folly and cold water'-- that Praed met his 'Partner.' And C. S. Calverley has told us how 'Year by year do Beauty's daughters In the sweetest gloves and shawls Troop to taste the Chattenham waters, And adorn the Chattenham balls. '_Nulla non donanda lauru_ Is that city: you could not, Placing England's map before you, Light on a more favoured spot.' Praed has a poem called 'Arrivals at a Watering-Place,' but it is not one of the most successful of his efforts. Nor have seaside places in general been made the subject of very excellent verse. Brighton is the one exception. Of that 'favoured spot,' James Smith, of 'Rejected Addresses' fame, was, perhaps, the first to write flatteringly. 'Long,' he declared-- 'Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn, Proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering-places! Boys yet unbreech'd, and virgins yet unborn, On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.' The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets still conspire to sing the praises of 'Old Ocean's bauble, glittering Brighton.' Everybody remembers the stirring exhortation of Mortimer Collins: 'If you approve of flirtations, good dinners, Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten; Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners, Winter at Brighton!' Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic. Brighton in November, he says, 'is what one should remember':