The improvement in the style of the buildings was the natural result of the great accession of visitors for the benefit of the sea-bathing. Bew remarks, Sunday, September 13th, 1778:—“Took the liberty of surveying all the bathing-machines. Fine ladies going,—fine ladies coming away. Observe them at the instant of bathing,—how humiliating! They appear more deplorable than so many corpses in shrouds, and put me in mind of the old dialogue between Death and the Lady. Methinks the guide is saying, in the character of Death,— Fair lady, lay your costly robes aside, Nor longer think to glory in your pride.” An idea may be formed of the rage for bathing at this period from an entry of the same diarist, Thursday, September 9th, 1779:—“Each man runs to a machine-ladder as it is dragging out of the sea, and scuffles who shall first set foot thereon: some send their footmen and contend by proxy; others go in in boots, or on horseback to meet the machines:—so that a tolerably modest man, on a busy morning, has generally an hour and a half, perhaps two hours, for contemplation on the sands, to the detriment of his shoes, as well as the diminution of his patience.” And on Saturday, the 11th of the same month, he writes:—“Have matched the bathers and bathees this trip however, having corrected them all handsomely—without quarrelling—have given them the slip; but take the particulars:—About 6 a.m., I drew along the sands, the machine of which I had become seized by prescriptive right, by legal possession, having deposited part of my wearing apparel therein, tho’ I had requested the assistance of the _marine centaur_, the man on horseback, in vain. As the tide was flowing, I soon plunged into the sea, stretched a long way out into the offing, and continued rolling and laughing among my brother porpoises, to think what a loss the company on shore would sustain for want of one machine out of seven, it being a very fine busy morning. The bathers holloa’d and bawled in vain; for I could not, indeed would not hear them. After swimming backwards and forwards along the shore, about four miles in the whole, the tide setting strong to the eastward all the time, I returned about nine; and Smoaker, growling like a bear with a sore head, swore bitterly.”