True; but all that is merely a memory. Something of that vanished Hastings may be recalled by those who discover the Brassey Institute in the centre of the town, and climb to where the collection of local prints and paintings is housed; and something more of it may be seen, still in being, by those others who prowl inquisitively in rear of High Street, and there discover the old parish church of St. Clement, fellow to All Saints. It stands in a tightly wedged corner, on rising ground, surrounded by houses and puzzling alleys, and looks very reverend. It is, in fact, over five hundred years old. An ancient cannon-ball wedged into the western face of its tower is a relic of one or other of the several hostile appearances off the town that were not uncommon in the old days; but whether it be the evidence of Dutch good marksmanship in the seventeenth century, or of French gunnery in in the early eighteenth, there is no evidence to show. The corresponding ball on the other side of the belfry window is by no means a miraculous follow-on shot, but is an instance of the eminently British passion for the _pendant_, for things to match and balance. Just as the average householder must needs have a vase or a statuette on either side of the clock on the dining-room or drawing-room mantelpiece, or else feel uncomfortably one-sided, so the burgesses of Hastings were uneasy until they had duplicated the insult some passing privateer had put upon their town; and so one of these warlike objects is a sham. [Illustration: ST. CLEMENT’S CHURCH.] LV I am told that Hastings discourages the “tripper,” and that no longer do cheap day-tickets for weekdays or Sundays prevail. He is discouraged because he brings his nose-bag with him, because his children grow fretful and annoy the select, and because he brings no trade into the town and is off again by nightfall. Thus, paradoxically, he is required not to come because he goes so soon. But perhaps the delays and the peculiar methods of the railways serve more certainly to discourage that variety of holiday-maker. However that may be, no one can deny the “popular” character of the holiday-making in August, which is not the select season at Hastings.