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NOTE FROM BRIGHTON.—­The exterior of the recently-opened Hotel Metropole, is so effective, that the Architect, Mr. WATERHOUSE, R.A., is likely to receive many commissions for the erection of similar hostelries at our principal marine resorts.  He will take out letters patent for change of name, and be known henceforward as Mr. SEA-WATERHOUSE, R.A.  By the way, the Directors of the Gordon Hotels Co. wish it to be generally known that they have not started a juvenile hotel for half-price children, under the name of the Gordon Boys’ Hotel.

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OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

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Who remembers a certain story called, if I remember aright, The Wheelbarrow of Bordeaux, that appeared in a Christmas Number of the Illustrated London News some years ago?  If no one else does, I do, says the Baron; and that sensational story was a sensational sell, wherein the agony was piled up to the “n’th,” and just as the secret was about to be disclosed, the only person who knew it, and was on the point of revealing it, died.  This is the sort of thing that Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING has just done in this month’s Lippincott’s Magazine.  It is told in a plain, rough and ready, blunt style, but so blunt that there’s no point in it.  And the idea,—­that is if the idea be that the likeness of the assassin remains on the retina of the victim’s eye, and can be reproduced by photography,—­is not a novelty.  Perhaps this story in Lippincott comes out of one of Mr. RUDYARD KIPLING’S pigeon-holes, and was just chucked in haphazard, because Editorial Lippincott wanted something with the name of the KIPLING, “bright and merry,” to it.  It’s not very “bright,” and it certainly isn’t “merry.”

Black’s Guide to Kent for 1890, useful in many respects, but not quite up to date.  The Baron cannot find any information about the splendid Golf Grounds, nor the Golf Club at Sandwich; it speaks of Sir MOSES MONTEFIORE’S place on the East Cliff of Ramsgate as if that benevolent centenarian were still alive; and it retains an old-fashioned description of Ramsgate as “The favorite resort of superior London tradesmen”—­“which,” says the Baron, “is, to my certain knowledge, very far from being the case.”  It talks of the “humours of the sands,” and alludes to what is merely the cheap-trippers’ season, as if this could possibly be the best time for Ramsgate.  The Guide knows nothing, or at least says nothing, of the Winter attractions; of the excellent pack of harriers; of the delightful climate from mid-September to January; of the southern aspect; of the pure air; of the many excursions to Ash, Deal, Sandwich, Ickham, and so forth; nor can the Baron discover any mention of the Granville Hotel, nor of the Albion Club, nor of the sport for fishers and shooters; nor of the Riviera-like mornings in November and in the early