It is to satisfy this craving that towns
have sprung up everywhere on our coasts and extended their
ugly fronts for miles and leagues, with their tens of
thousands of windows from which the city-sickened wretches may
gaze and gaze and listen and feed their sick souls with the
ocean. That is to say, during their indoor hours; at other
times they walk or sit or lie as close as they can to it,
following the water as it ebbs and reluctantly retiring before
it when it returns. It was not so formerly, before the
discovery was made that the sea could cure us. Probably our
great-grandfathers didn't even know they were sick; at all
events, those who had to live in the vicinity of the sea were
satisfied to be a little distance from it, out of sight of its
grey desolation and, if possible, out of hearing of its
"accents disconsolate." This may be seen anywhere on our
coasts; excepting the seaports and fishing settlements, the
towns and villages are almost always some distance from the
sea, often in a hollow or at all events screened by rising
ground and woods from it. The modern seaside place has, in
most cases, its old town or village not far away but quite as
near as the healthy ancients wished to be.
The old village nearest to our little naked and ugly modern
town was discovered at a distance of about two miles, but it
might have been two hundred, so great was the change to its
sheltered atmosphere.
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