Modern Hastings, like Brighton, dates its rise from the ultimate quarter of the eighteenth century, and its emergence from the status of a fisher town is due to the same prime cause: the discovery by the medical profession of fresh air and sea-bathing as specifics for that mysterious eighteenth-century _malaise_, “the vapours,” and all manner of other ailments. No royal favour, however, helped Hastings; only the recommendations of Dr. Baillie in the first instance, and secondly the fine brisk air of the place itself. Indeed, the climate of Hastings is a matter of as great concern to the town as her looks to a woman: it is her chief asset. You may read strange things of the Hastings climate, and indeed of that of any seaside town whose business is to attract visitors; and you will find, as a matter of curiosity, that Hastings claims not one climate, but several, according to height and position. Like the artful sinner who tried to get the best of both this world and the next, Hastings wants it both ways, and would have you believe it has actually got it, too. Thus, with a reminiscent shiver at the thought of the winds we have faced elsewhere, we read appreciatively of how the town is “screened from the biting blasts of the north and east winds,” and open to the “healthful and uncontaminated vapours” from the south and west, is saved from “the unwelcome calms which envelop some holiday resorts.” This, I take it, is one in the eye for Bath, for example, where in summer the visitor is stewed as effectively as any prune, or for Torquay, whose “gridiron” even St. Lawrence might on occasion find uncomfortably warm; while I think, on the other count, the withers of Brighton and of Weymouth—among other places where the east wind is capable of freezing your very marrow—are severely wrung. In short, Hastings, by her own showing, is one of those favoured (not to say miraculous) places each of which has the better climate than any other, where the sun shines just so long and so brilliantly as you please, where the winds are never rude and the air never stagnant, and there are four hundred fine days (at the very least of it) to the three hundred and sixty-five of every year.