~306~~The naiads of the deep are a strange race of mortals, half fish and half human, with a masculine coarseness of manner that, I am told, has been faithfully copied from their great original, the once celebrated Martha Gun. It is not unusual for these women to continue in the water up to their waists for four hours at a time, without suffering the least affection of cold or rheumatism, and living to a great age. A dingy empiric has invented a new system of _humbug_ which is in great repute here, and is called _shampooing_; a sort of stewing alive by steam, sweetened by being forced through odoriferous herbs, and undergoing the pleasant sensation of being dabbed all the while with pads of flannels through holes in the wet blankets that surround you, until the cartilaginous substances of your joints are made as pliable as the ligaments of boiled calves' feet, your whole system relaxed and unnerved, and your trembling legs as useless in supporting your body as a pair of boots would be without the usual quantity of flesh and bone within them. The Steyne affords excellent subject for the study of character, and the pencil of the humorist; the walks round are paved with brick, which, when the thermometer is something above eighty-six in the shade (the case just now), is very like pacing your parched feet over the pantiles of a Turkish stove. There is, indeed, a ~307~~grass-plot within the rails, but the luxury of walking upon it is reserved for the fishermen of the place exclusively, except on some extraordinary occasion, when the whole rabble of the town are let loose to annoy the visitants by puffing tobacco smoke in their faces, or jostling and insulting them with coarse ribaldry, until the genteel and decent are compelled to quit the promenade. I have had two or three such specimens of Brighton manners while staying here, and could only wish I had the assistance of about twenty of the _Oxford_togati_, Trinitarians, or Bachelors of Brazennose. I think we should hit upon some expedient to tame these brutes, and teach them civilized conduct--an Herculean labour which the town authorities seem afraid to attempt. The easy distance between this and the metropolis, with the great advantages of expeditious travelling, enable the multitudinous population of London to pour forth its motley groups, in greater variety than at any other watering place, Margate excepted, with, however, this difference in favour of the former, that the mixture had more of the sprinkling of fashion about them, here and there a name of note, a splendid equipage, or a dazzling star, to illumine the dull nomenclatures in the library books of the Johnson's, the Thomson's, the Brown's, and the Levi's. The last-mentioned fraternity congregate here in shoals, usurp all the best lodgings, at the windows of which they are to be seen soliciting notice, with their hooked noses, copper countenances, and inquisitive eyes,