Poole nowadays, though having a considerable trade in timber with the Baltic ports and in seaborne coal, has, on the whole, declined rather than advanced from its position as a port in its palmiest days. There are but few buildings remaining of any note, and even its chief church is an unpicturesque structure standing at the west end of the town a little north of the quay and somewhat at the back of the High Street. It is of no antiquity, although it probably stands upon the actual site of a much more ancient building. Poole is still, however, a busy seaport, and the High Street, which is of considerable length, generally wears an air of movement and enterprise, although the sea trade of the town has very much altered in character of late years. In former times it was of a much more general nature, and its ancient and prosperous trade with Newfoundland was its chief stand-by. Its shipbuilding, which was once a source of considerable prosperity, has of late years greatly declined, although some small yachts and boats are still built. The quays form one of the most interesting and busy portions of the town; and on them may be seen many types, in whose faces can still be traced some of the characteristics of the old sea dogs who fought during the latter half of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries so gallantly and stoutly against the French. Within the net-work of narrow alleys running in and out amongst the more solid red-brick houses that flank the quay--remnants of the prosperity of merchants long since dead--picturesque bits of architecture are discoverable, with old-time doorways hidden away in grass-grown courtyards, and fragments of the ancient town walls beautiful with lichen and weather-stained by ages of storm and stress. The modern town has grown up rather by extension of its borders than the substitution of new buildings for old, and the older warehouses and dwellings by the waterside dating back a century or so have not, as a general rule, been pulled down to be replaced by new ones. The extension and growth of the town is chiefly marked by the more modern houses which have been built along the roads leading to Parkstone and Bournemouth on the rising ground to the north-east of the town. Poole, picturesque of approach by water though it be, is, after all, we think, seen to the greatest advantage when viewed from the encircling highlands from the south-east, south-west, east, and north-east. Then distance lends a softness to its more unlovely part, and the haze of smoke and vapour which generally hangs above the town and the distant glimpses of the lagoon-like harbour serve to make up a picture of delight and interest.