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Ramsgate, a much more attractive and enjoyable centre, rich in excursions to points of genuine interest, dates somewhat later. It first came into note about the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it did a modest trade with the Levant and the Black Sea, or, as contemporary English more prettily phrases it, ‘with Russia and the east country.’ In 1750 the first pier was built, as a national work, mainly to serve as a harbour of refuge for ships caught in gales off the Downs. The engineer was Smeaton, and he succeeded in creating an artificial harbour of great extent, which has lasted substantially up to the present time. This new port, rendered safer by the enlargement in 1788, made Ramsgate at once into an important seafaring town, the capital of the Kentish herring trade, alive with smacks in the busy season. The steamers did it less good at first than they did to Margate; but the completion of the two railways, and the building of the handsome extensions on the east and west cliffs, turned it at once into a frequented watering-place. It is the fashion nowadays rather to laugh at Ramsgate. Marine painters know better. Few harbours are livelier with red and brown sails; few coasts more enjoyable than the cliff walk looking across towards the Goodwins, the low shore by Sandwich, the higher ground about Deal and Dover, and the dim white line of Cape Blancnez in the distance.

Broadstairs, close by the lighthouse on the North Foreland (the Cantium Promontorium of Roman geography), is still newer as a place of public resort. But as a fishing village it dates back to the middle ages, when the little chapel of “Our Lady of Bradstow” stood in the gap of the cliffs, and was much addressed by anxious sailors rounding the dangerous point after the silting up of the Wantsum. Ships as they passed lowered their top-sails to do it reverence. Under Henry VIII. a small wooden pier was thrown out to protect the fishing boats; and about the same time, as part of the general scheme of coast defence inaugurated by the king, a gate and portcullis were erected to close the gap seaward, in case of invasion. The archway and portcullis groove remain to this day, with an inscription recording their repair in 1795 by Sir John Henniker. The railway has turned Broadstairs into a minor rival of Ramsgate and Margate and ‘a favourite resort for gentry,’ where ‘those who require quietness, either from ill health or a retiring disposition,’ says a local guide-book, may enjoy ‘the united advantages of tranquillity and seclusion.’ Hundreds of retiring souls indeed may be observed on the beach any day during the season, seeking tranquillity in a game of cards, repairing their health with the stimulus of donkey exercise, or soothing their souls in secret hour with music sweet as love, discoursed to them by gentlemen in loose pink suits and artificially imitated AEthiopian countenances.

Westgate is the very latest-born of these Thanet gates, a brand-new watering-place, where every house proclaims the futility of the popular belief that Queen Anne is dead, and where fashionable physicians send fashionable patients to cure imaginary diseases by a dose of fresh air. It has no history, for only a few years since it consisted entirely of a coastguard station and three or four cottages: but it is interesting as casting light on the nature of the revolution which has turned Thanet inside out and hind part before, making the open sea take the place of the Kentish mainland, and the railway to London that of the silted Wantsum.

At the present day Thanet as a whole consists of two parts: the live sea front, which is one long succession of suburban watering-places; and the agricultural interior, including the reclaimed estuary, which ranks among the best-farmed and most productive districts in all England, Yet till a very recent date the Thanet farmers still retained the use of the old Kentish plough, the coulter of which is reversed at the end of every furrow; and many other curious insular customs mark off the agriculture of the island even now from that which prevails over the rest of the country.

I don’t know whether I’m wrong, but it often seems to me the very best way to gain an idea of the real history of England is thus to take a single district piecemeal, and trace out for one’s self the main features of its gradual evolution. By so doing we get away from mere dynastic or political considerations, leave behind the bang of drums or the blare of trumpets, and reach down to the living facts of common human activity themselves–the realities of the workaday world of toilers and spinners. By narrowing our field of view, in fact, we gain a clearer picture on our smaller focus. We see how the big historical revolutions actually affected the life of the people; and we trace more readily the true nature of deep-reaching changes when we follow them out in detail over a particular area.