At the beginning of
this month I saw fruit-trees in blossom, stretched out flat against stone
walls, reminding me of a dead bird nailed against the side of a barn.
But it has been a backward and dreary spring; and I think Southport, in
the course of it, has lost its advantage over the rest of the Liverpool
neighborhood in point of milder atmosphere. The east-wind feels even
rawer here than in the city.
Nevertheless, the columns, of the Southport Visitor begin to be well
replenished with the names of guests, and the town is assuming its aspect
of summer life. To say the truth, except where cultivation has done its
utmost, there is very little difference between winter and summer in the
mere material aspect of Southport; there being nothing but a waste of
sand intermixed with plashy pools to seaward, and a desert of
sand-hillocks on the land side. But now the brown, weather-hardened
donkey-women haunt people that stray along the reaches, and delicate
persons face the cold, rasping, ill-tempered blast on the promenade, and
children dig in the sands; and, for want of something better, it seems to
be determined that this shall be considered spring.
Southport is as stupid a place as I ever lived in; and I cannot but
bewail our ill fortune to have been compelled to spend so many months on
these barren sands, when almost every other square yard of England
contains something that would have been historically or poetically
interesting.
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