Now I cannot help thinking that English people, as a rule, do not show the smallest common sense in the manner they manage their holidays, more especially, of course, among the middle classes; the upper portion of which often enough have a tiny cottage somewhere, of which they speak grandly as ‘my country house,’ and the address of which is inscribed on their cards, and mentioned in the ‘blue book.’ And they fly to this the moment the weather becomes in the least warm, remaining there until they are driven back by the falling leaves and chilling fogs of an October in the country; and then wonder they are so little benefited. Why, they have not had any change; no more, at least, than those a shade lower in the social scale, who go to the same watering-place year after year, spend their mornings on the beach, their afternoons in slumber, or a ‘country walk,’ and their evenings on the pier or parade, and who see the same people, say the same things, and do the same actions mechanically as they do in town, only perhaps in a smaller space, and under far more uncomfortable circumstances. The very stupidest thing on earth, to my mind, is the annual sojourn of a large family of small children, accompanied by their parents, to the orthodox seaside rooms or lodgings. In the first place, the parents, children, and nurses are very much too much together; the annoyances of the predatory habits of the landladies spoil Materfamilias’ temper; the servants are disorganised, and imagine that because the family makes holiday they are to be in some measure allowed to do just as they like, and much resent being unable to make excursions and ramble at large, whether it is convenient or not for their mistress to spare them. And, indeed, I do not know a more hard-worked, driven creature than the ordinary Materfamilias at the seaside, more especially if she has left her own large airy house, with its nurseries and schoolrooms, and taken lodgings at a fashionable spot, where every inch of space costs pounds, and where she can never rid herself of her family for one moment.