What is it that we seek for, we Englishmen and Englishwomen, who year by year, about the month of November, are seen crowding the Folkestone and Dover steamboats, with that unmistakable "going abroad" look of travelling--bags and wide-awakes and bundles of wraps and alpaca gowns? I think it may be comprised in one word--_sunshine_. This dear old land of ours, with all its luxuries and all its comforts and all its associations of home and people, still lacks one thing--and that is climate. For climate means health to one half of us; and health means power of enjoyment; for, without it, the most perfect of homes (and nowhere is that word understood so well as in England) is spoiled and saddened. So, in pursuit of this great boon, a widow lady and her children, with a doctor and two other friends, started off in the winter of 186-, in spite of ominous warnings of revolutions, and grim stories of brigands, for that comparatively unvisited country called Spain. As far as St. Sebastian the journey was absolutely without interest or adventure of any kind. The express train dashed them past houses and villages, and picturesque old towns with fine church towers, from Paris to Bordeaux, and from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and so on past the awful frontier, the scene of so many passages-at-arms between officials and ladies' maids, till they found themselves crossing the picturesque bridge which leads to the little town of St. Sebastian, with its beach of fine sand, washed by the long billowy waves of the Atlantic on the one hand, and its riant, well-cultivated little Basque farms on the other. As to the town itself, time and the prefect may eventually make it a second Biarritz, as in every direction lodging-houses are springing up, till it will become what one of Dickens's heroes would call "the most sea-bathingest place" that ever was! But at present it is a mass of rough stone and lime and scaffolding; and the one straight street leading from the hotel to the church of St. Maria, with the castle above, are almost all that remains of the old town which stood so many sieges, and was looked upon as the key of Northern Spain. The hotel appeared but tolerably comfortable to our travellers, fresh from the luxuries of Paris. When they returned, four or five months later, they thought it a perfect paradise of comfort and cleanliness. After wandering through the narrow streets, and walking into one or two uninteresting churches, it was resolved to climb up to the citadel which commands the town, and to which the ascent is by the fair zigzag road, like that which leads to Dover Castle. A small garrison remains in the keep, which is also a military prison. The officers receiving our party very courteously, inviting them to walk on the battlements, and climb up to the flag-staff, and offering them the use of their large telescope for the view, which is certainly magnificent, especially toward the sea. There is a tiny chapel in