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houses which stretched away in front of him, so dark that it seemed more
like a gulf between two cliffs than the entrance to a town.
CHAPTER IV.
ANOTHER FORM OF DESERT.
It was Weymouth which he had just entered. Weymouth then was not the
respectable and fine Weymouth of to-day.
Ancient Weymouth did not present, like the present one, an
irreproachable rectangular quay, with an inn and a statue in honour of
George III. This resulted from the fact that George III. had not yet
been born. For the same reason they had not yet designed on the slope of
the green hill towards the east, fashioned flat on the soil by cutting
away the turf and leaving the bare chalk to the view, the white horse,
an acre long, bearing the king upon his back, and always turning, in
honour of George III., his tail to the city. These honours, however,
were deserved. George III., having lost in his old age the intellect he
had never possessed in his youth, was not responsible for the calamities
of his reign. He was an innocent. Why not erect statues to him?
Weymouth, a hundred and eighty years ago, was about as symmetrical as a
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