Page:Austen Sanditon and other miscellanea.djvu/43

 Rh interested as they were warm. He wanted to secure the promise of a visit, to get as many of the Family as his own house would contain, to follow him to Sanditon as soon as possible; and healthy as they all undeniably were, foresaw that every one of them would be benefited by the sea. He held it indeed as certain, that no person could be really well, no person (however upheld for the present by fortuitous aids of exercise and spirits in a semblance of Health) could be really in a state of secure and permanent Health without spending at least six weeks by the Sea every year. The Sea air and Sea Bathing together were nearly infallible, one or the other of them being a match for every Disorder, of the Stomach, the Lungs or the Blood; They were anti-spasmodic, anti-pulmonary, anti-septic, anti-bilious and anti-rheumatic. Nobody could catch cold by the Sea, Nobody wanted appetite by the Sea, Nobody wanted Spirits, Nobody wanted Strength. They were healing, softing, relaxing, fortifying and bracing, seemingly just as was wanted, sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the Sea breeze failed, the Sea-Bath was the certain corrective; and where Bathing disagreed, the Sea Breeze alone was evidently designed by Nature for the cure. His eloquence however could not prevail. Mr. and Mrs. Heywood never left home. Marrying early and having a very numerous Family, their movements had been long limited to one small circle; and they were older in Habits than in Age. Excepting two Journeys to London in the year, to receive his Dividends, Mr. Heywood went no farther than his feet or his well-tried old Horse could carry him, and Mrs. Heywood’s Adventurings were only now and then to visit her Neighbours, in the old Coach which had been new when they married and fresh lined on their eldest son’s coming of age ten years ago. They had [a] very pretty Property—enough, had their family been of reasonable Limits, to have