rock-salmon--brought in by the smaller and less venturesome boats by dozens, not by lasts of ten thousand. Take the cod as the most valuable of these fish. I saw four fine cod-fish sold by auction yesterday on the quay for 5s. 3d. Within a few hundred yards, and all over the town, cod was selling at the shops at 6d. the pound. Surely a very moderate amount of organising ability would enable those who catch these fish to get the retail prices prevailing on the same day in the home market, and then the experience gained might assist materially in the solution of the larger problem. Meantime, besides the almost unique interest and beauty of its surroundings,--the steep cliffs, on which the quaint old red-roofed houses, with their wooden balconies, are piled in most picturesque and unaccountable groups; the grand old abbey ruin looking down from the highest point; the swing-bridge between the two harbours, and the estuary beyond, running up into a fine amphitheatre of green meadow and dark wood, dotted with village churches and old windmills, and backed by the high moors,--there is a joyous side to Whitby harbour, even on days when the market goes most against the Dogger Bank fishermen. If the fathers have too often to eat sour grapes, their children’s teeth are not set on edge,--such merry, well-fed, bare-footed urchins of both sexes I never remember to have seen elsewhere. They swarm, out of school hours, along the quays; skim up and down the water-worn harbour-walls wherever there is a rope hanging; run over the herring boats lying side by side, as soon as the freights are cleared; and toboggan down the boat slides at the gangways, dragging themselves along on their stomachs when these are not slippery enough for the usual method of descent. There seems, too, to be a large supply of old rickety tubs kept for their special use; for all day long you see two or three of them scrambling into one of these, and sculling about the harbour, no man hindering or apparently noticing them. Finer training for their future life would be hard to find, and one cannot help doubting as one sees their straight toes, as handy almost as fingers in their climbing feats, whether the last word has been spoken as to clothing the human foot, at any rate up to the age of ten or twelve. It is not often, I think, that one comes on early surroundings and heroes entirely suited to each other; but Whitby’s hero--patron saint I had nearly called him--could have found no such suitable place to have been raised in all the world round. James Cook was born in a neighbouring village, but first apprenticed on board a Whitby collier, and to the last days of his life retained a most loving remembrance of the old town. Every one of his famous ships, the _Endeavour_, the _Resolution_, and the _Discovery_, were built at Whitby. The house, of his master, Mr. Walker, with whom he lived during his apprenticeship as a sailor lad, and to whom most of his letters were