We had planned to stop at Arundel, but the promise in our guide-books of a “level and first-class” road to Brighton, and the fact that a full moon would light us, determined us to proceed.  It proved a pleasant trip; the greater part of the way we ran along the ocean, which sparkled and shimmered as it presented a continual vista of golden-hued water stretching away toward the moon.  It was now early in August; the English twilights were becoming shorter, and for the third time it was necessary to light the gas-lamps.  We did not reach the hotel in Brighton until after ten o’clock.

Brighton is probably the most noted seaside resort in England—­a counterpart of our American Atlantic City.  It is fifty miles south of London, within easy reach of the metropolis, and many London business men live here, making the trip every day.  The town has a modern appearance, having been built within the past hundred years, and is more regularly laid out than the average English city.  For two or three miles fronting the beach there is a row of hotels, some of them most palatial.  The Grand, where we stopped, was one of the handsomest we saw in England.  It has an excellent garage in connection and the large number of cars showed how important this branch of hotel-keeping had become.  There is no motor trip more generally favored by Londoners than the run to Brighton, as a level and nearly straight road connects the two cities.  There is nothing here to detain a tourist who is chiefly interested in historic England.  About a hundred years ago the fine sunny beach was “discovered” and the fishing village of Brightholme was rapidly transformed into one of the best built and most modern of the resort towns in England.  Its present population of over one hundred thousand places it at the head of the exclusive watering places, so far as size is concerned.

A little to the north of Brighton is Lewes, the county town of Sussex, rich in relics of antiquity.  Its early history is rather vague, but it is known to have been an important place under the Saxon kings.  William the Conqueror generously presented it to one of his followers, who fortified it and built the castle the ruins of which crown the hill overlooking the town.  The keep affords a vantage point for a magnificent view, extending in every direction.  I had seen a good many English landscapes from similar points of vantage, notably the castles of Ludlow, Richmond, Raglan, Chepstow and others, and it seemed strange that in such a small country there should be so many varying and distinctly dissimilar prospects, yet all of them pleasing and picturesque.