The hotel is no longer fashionable. Nahant is no more a thronged resort. Its own career has not been unlike that of the belles who frequented it, for although the hurry and glare and excitement of a merely fashionable watering-place are past, there has succeeded a quiet, genial enjoyment and satis faction, which are far pleasanter. Some sunny morning, when your memory is busy with Willis's sparkling stories of Nahant life a quarter of a century ago, and with all the pleasant tales you may have collected in vour wanderings, from those who were a part of that life, then step over with some friend, whose maturity may well seem to you the flower of all that the poet celebrated in the bud, and she will reanimate the spacious and silent piazza with the forms that have made it famous. And ever as you stroll and listen, your eyes will wander across the irregular group of cottages, and prohibit your fancying that the romance is over.

This is a kind of sentiment inseparable from spots like this. They concentrate, during a brief time, so many and such various persons, and unite them so closely in the constant worship and pursuit of a common pleasure, that the personal association with the spot becomes profound; and when the space is very limited, as at Nahant, even painful. It is not surprising, therefore, that many who loved and fre

quented Nahant years ago, now recoil from it, and only visit it with the same fascinated reluctance with which they regard the faded love-tokens of years so removed that they seem to have detached themselves from life. This will explain to you much of the surprise with which Bostonians listen to your praises of Nahant. "Is any thing left?" say their smiles and looks; "it is a cup we drained so long ago."

Yet no city has an ocean-gallery, so near, so convenient and rapid of access, so complete and satis factory in characteristics of the sea, as Boston in Nahant.

You step upon the steamer in the city and in less than an hour you land at Nahant, and breathe the untainted air from the "boreal pole," and gaze upon a sublime sea-sweep, which refreshes the mind as the air the lungs. You find no village, no dust, no commotion. You encounter no crowds of carriages or of curious and gossiping people. No fast men in velvet coats are trotting fast horses. You meet none of the disagreeable details of a fashionable wateringplace, but a sunny silence broods over the realm of little brown cottages. They stand apart at easy distances, each with its rustic piazza, with vines climbing and blooming about the columns, with windows and doors looking upon the sea.

In the midst of the clusters, where roads meet,

stands a small Temple, a church of graceful proportions, but unhappily clogged with wings. It is the only Catholic Church I know, for all services are held there in rotation, from the picturesque worship of the Roman faith to the severest form of Protestantism. The green land slopes away behind the Temple to a row of willows in a path across the field, whence you can not see the ocean, and it is so warm and sheltered, like an inland dell, that the sound of the sea comes to it only as a pleasant fancy.

This pretty path ends in the thickest part of the settlement. But even here it has no village air. It is still, and there are no shops, and the finest trees upon the promontory shadow the road that gradually climbs the hill, and then, descending, leads you across little Nahant to Lynn Beach. The area of Nahant is very small. From almost any cottage porch you survey the whole scene. But it has these two great advantages for a summer sojourn; an air of entire repose, for there seems to be no opportunity or convenience for any other than a life of leisure, and the perpetual presence of the sea.

At Nahant you can not fancy poverty or labor. Their appearance is elided from the landscape. Taking the tone of your reverie from the peaceful little Temple and glancing over the simple little houses,

with the happy carelessness of order in their distribution, and the entire absence of smoke, dust, or din, you must needs dream that Pericles and Aspasia have withdrawn from the capital, with a choice court of friends and lovers, to pass a month of Grecian gaiety upon the sea. The long day swims by nor disturbs that dream. If haply upon the cliffs at sunset, straying by "the loud-sounding sea," you catch glimpses of a figure, whose lofty loveliness would have inspired a sweeter and statelier tone in that old verse, you feel only that you have soen Aspasia, and Aspasia as the imagination beholds her, and are not surprised; or a head wreathed with folds of black splendor varies that pure Greek rhythm with a Spanish strain, or cordial Saxon smiles and ringing laughter dissolve your Grecian dream into a western reality.

For its sea, too, Nahant is unsurpassed. You can not escape the Ocean here. It is in your eye and in . your ear forever. At Newport the Ocean is a luxury, You live away from it and drive to it as you drive to the Lake at Saratoga, and in the silence of midnight as you withdraw from the polking parlor, you hear it calling across the solitary fields, wailing over your life and wondering at it. At Nahant the sea is Eupreme. The place is so small that you can not build your house out of sight of the Ocean, and to

watch the splendid play of its life, is satisfaction and enjoyment enough. Many of the cottages are built directly on the rocks of the shore. Of course there are few trees, except the silver poplar, which thrives luxuriantly in the salt air, and which, waving in the fresh wind and turning its glistening leaves to the sun, is like a tree in perpetual blossom. Flowers are cherished about some of the houses, and they have an autumnal gorgeousness and are doubly dear and beautiful on the edge of the salt sea waste.

The air which the ocean breathes over the spot is electrical. No other ocean - air is so exhilarating. After breakfast at Nahant, said Mot, I feel like Cœur de Lion, and burn to give battle to the Saracens. But the brave impulse ends in smoke, and musing and chatting, and building castles in the clouds, you loiter away the day upon the piazza, ending by climbing about the cliffs at sunset or galloping over the beach. Thus the ocean and the cliffs are the natural glories of Nahant, and the sky which you see as from the deck of a ship, and which adequately completes the simple outline of the world as seen from those rocks.

The cliffs are imposing. They are the jagged black edges of rock with which the promontory tears the sea. Chased by the tempests beyond, the ocean dashes in and leaping upon the rocks lashes them