Biarritz is a town situated on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, and consists chiefly of hotels and boarding-houses built on rocks. It is peopled generally by emperors, waiters, hawkers of spurious Spanish goods, and very idle ladies and gentlemen. Creatures like mermaids, with their extremities encased in mackintosh, are seen nearly all day long sporting about in the waters which break upon the yellow sand, and dancing quadrilles in the sea with very odd-looking fish of the male gender, also swathed in curious garments, which cause them at a little distance to resemble very badly rolled-up umbrellas, or an imperfect class of sausages. Barring the bathing, the amusements of Biarritz, or Biarits, as some of the natives write it, are very dear and rather silly. People revolve nightly on their own axes to the solemn strains of a horn band in a large casino, with expressions of countenance as serious and business-like as if they were undergoing a course of rotatory exercise recommended by their medical advisers as a stimulant after the chills of the bath; while the day is consumed, one hardly knows how, except it be in flirting, aquatics, scandal, abuse of one's neighbours, or in buying from gaudy coffee-coloured Spaniards trumpery which, under no conceivable circumstances, could the most ingenious mind ever turn to any account. There is certainly grand food for the eye whichever way it may turn, "whene'er we take our walks abroad," for the long jagged line of the Spanish mountains is seen, now clear, dark, and sharp, now wild and storm-wrapped, rising loftily from the far blue main; and there is always playing on one's cheek, or with the flowing tress of many a pretty damsel, the pure strengthening air of the Bay of Biscay, sweeping with untainted breath from across the dark, wild waves of the rolling Atlantic. From the summits of the various sea-worn rocks and pinnacles which jut out from the land may be seen beautiful views of the white amphitheatre of Biarritz, formed by clusters of villas, casinos, and bathing pavilions along the curving shore, or piled on gentle hills, rising one above the other in picturesque confusion, with their sunny walls shaded here and there by green shrubberies, or gay with flaunting banners waving over shining terrace and grassy slope, the stately Villa Eugénie of the Empress commanding the whole. In front the restless waves are ever rolling in on the yellow sands, in their ceaseless chase from the Bay of Biscay, spread out so broad, blue, and beautiful; while to the south the distant skies seem walled up by that grand dark chain of the Spanish mountains, towering through clouds and tempests in wild and lofty grandeur, or melting away on the far horizon into the heat of the golden day and the spume of the tossing sea.