While it is certainly a mistaken compliment to compare the situation of Weston with that of Brighton, it is, on the other hand, unfair to Brighton to pretend that, as a town, Weston approaches it, for size or splendour. But in every respect the places are so wholly dissimilar that it would be the worst of mistakes to play the one off against the other. One of the very earliest discoverers of Weston was Mrs. Piozzi, the Mrs. Thrale of earlier years, friend of Dr. Johnson. Writing hence in 1819, she mentions the fine qualities of the air: “The breezes here are most salubrious: no land nearer than North America when we look down the Channel; and ’tis said that Sebastian Cabot used to stand where I now sit, and meditate his future discoveries of Newfoundland.” The reference to “no land nearer than North America,” with the cautious proviso, “when we look down the Channel,” strikes the modern observer, who in fine weather distinctly sees the busy towns of the South Wales coast and the smoke-wreaths of its factory chimneys, not more than ten miles distant, as particularly quaint. The old county historians have little to say of Weston, and what they have to remark is concerned only with the descent of the manor. Even so comparatively recently as 1824—five years, it will be noted, later than Mrs. Piozzi’s raptures—Weston remained a very small place, as shown in an old engraving published at the time in Rutter’s “Westonian Guide.” It consisted, it would appear, of the parish church of St. John, just rebuilt, and some thirty houses. A few trees, of a distinctly Noah’s Ark type, looked upon the sands, occupied by two bathing-machines, a shed, a horse and cart, and twelve widely distributed people of uncertain but pensive character. Such was the old inheritance of the Pigott and Smyth-Pigott family, who have owned the manor of Weston, with much else in the neighbourhood, since 1696. But the evidence afforded by the frontispiece to “Rutter’s Guide,” which shows Weston like some sparse settlement on a desolate shore, does not tally with the statements contained in the booklet itself, in whose pages we read: “The fishermen’s huts have almost disappeared and the town now contains about two hundred and fifty houses; a large portion of which are respectable residences,[2] and even some elegant mansions; but notwithstanding this, its general appearance is little inviting to the stranger, especially in gloomy weather, or when the ebb of the spring tides leaves open large tracts of beach. But on a fine summer evening, when the tide is in, nothing can be more beautiful than the scene which it presents: numerous groups walking on its smooth and extensive sands, intermingled with a variety of carriages, horses, fishermen wading with nets, and the villagers enjoying the exhilarating breeze after the fatigues of the day.” Footnote 2: This is good hearing.