places, would be irksome as imprisonment: once extend your walk, or ride but for half a mile, and all the benefit of the mild climate is exchanged for the cold breath of winter. At Torquay there is, indeed, more scope, and walks and rides of considerable extent may be taken without injurious exposure. It is, moreover, almost entirely free from the fogs which too often hang over Exmouth and Dawlish.

Not many years ago Torquay and the other watering-places along the coast were mere fishing villages, huddled on the shore, dreaming nothing of the change shortly to come over them. Their rapid growth is remarkable; but to some who wander from one wooded landscape to another the sight of villas, terraces, and smoking chimneys will be but a poor exchange for hill-sides rough with crags and embowered with trees.

Paignton, a village about half-way, with a fine old church-tower, supplies a want felt at Torquay-a good sandy beach for bathing-and shows the results in new houses pushed on and on till they have crossed the road. There is another attraction of which the villagers are, or were, not a little proud—a species of early cabbage much cultivated in the neighbourhood. A rural, undulating country, stocked with orchards, lies behind. Sheltered on all other quarters, Torbay is open to the east, and when gales blow from that quarter the sea tumbles in with great violence, and Paignton being situated in the centre, its sands sustain the shock of the storm. The tons of seaweed, the thousands of bushels of shell-fish of many sorts, and heaps of drift-wood

thrown up by one of these easterly growls are marvellous to contemplate, and are the cause of a most animated outbreak of industry among the inhabitants, who flock to the beach and carry off the spoil.

Brixham is a strange place—that is, the old part of the town known as Brixham Quay; the new portion is a mile or more from the sea. I engaged a bed at what, in the dark, appeared to be a respectable inn; but when the hostess showed me into a room where a couple of pedlars were at their supper, I began to have doubts, and asked to see my bedroom. It was as clean and airy as could be wished; so, reassured, I went down again to the wayfarer's apartment. Had I not myself been taken for a pedlar that very day? The two strangers were master and man, travelling the country with "ornyments," as they called them, of Derbyshire Each carried a basket filled with the crysspar. talline wares on his head-the man's the heavier-and seeing such loads, I felt ashamed of occasional impatience under my knapsack: a trifle in comparison. What appetites they had; and how economically satisfied! A bag, containing bread, cheese, and tea was produced from one of the baskets-the inn supplied what Cobbett calls "the tea-tackle," boiling water, and a plate of cold meat-and they ate and drank as only hungry trampers can. It had been a bad day with them; only five shillings taken in twelve hours' walking was, as the master said, "tightish work;" but some days they took thirty shillings, and so the trade answered pretty well in the long run. New supplies

when wanted were drawn from a stock left in London; and though times were not what they used to be, there was still a handsome profit to be made for those who knew how. It was their first visit to Devonshire, and though the hills were well enough to look at, to trudge up one side and down the other with a load on your head was no joke. "Give me the other side of London-Essex and Cambridgeshire," said the master, and the man declared himself of the same mind. I recommended Salisbury Plain, and both agreed to try Wiltshire on their way back.

On turning out early the next morning I found the Globe to be within a few yards of the port; and such a port as one hardly expects to see in England, being not unlike those queer old places on the opposite side of the Channel. A slovenly quay runs along two sides of a basin, crowded with fishing-boats and square-rigged vessels; the third is occupied by a ship-yard, noisy with the blows of adzes and hammers, and odorous with pitch and tar. The houses around are quite in keeping, built in happy disregard of taste and order, and as if meant to be shabby; yet, with a quick eye and ready pencil, a score of sketches may be carried away from this, at first sight, unpromising spot: frowsy old houses and sheds, ricketty stairs, a condemned hull or two, piles of baskets, heaps of nets, and amphibiouslooking men and women, supply a choice of subjects. And over all there prevails a smell of fish, and, should the tide be out, of slime; and you fancy it can hardly be true that Brixham is one of the most important

fishing-towns in England. Torbay is a mine of wealth to it.

Look at that man, burly as an old-fashioned coachman, pacing up and down the pier, hands in pockets, with the air of one well satisfied with himself: he is a "Brixham lord;" in other words, he holds a share in the manorial revenues. The Normans, who knew how to appropriate the good things of their conquest, once held the manor of Brixham, and it was handed over from one noble family to another for centuries, until a dozen fishermen clubbed together and bought it. Since then the original shares have undergone many subdivisions, and now the "lords" are numerous. wonder they look a little saucy, for the value of the fish brought in is sometimes 600l. a week, captured by a fleet of two hundred trawling vessels. When these return in the evening the quay presents a busy scene with the landing, selling, sorting, and packing of fish. There is great uproar and much apparent confusion; but soon the large vans standing in readiness are piled with the laden baskets, and driven off to Torquay, from whence the fish is forwarded by rail.

No

On the pier stands what many will consider the chief object of interest at Brixham-the stone on which William III. stepped when he disembarked with his troops to give a lesson to the unteachable Stuarts. It is preserved in the base of a small obelisk, protected by an iron railing, and bearing the inscription: "On this stone, and near this spot, William, Prince of Orange, first set foot on his landing in England, 5th of Novem

ber, 1688." A memorable day. We know, or ought to know, the rest. Those who do not will find it in

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Macaulay." At the end of the pier, under the lantern, is a tablet recording the landing of another William— Duke of Clarence-in 1823: an event which the townsfolk celebrated by presenting a piece chipped off from the original stone, and inclosed in an oaken box, to their royal visitor.

Cross to the opposite side of the harbour and take the road leading out to the bay. You pass the new breakwater being built to enlarge the capacity of the port, and about a mile farther come to a brambled steep the flank of Berry Head. Climb to the top, and you find an undulating plain, narrowing as it stretches seawards, where an embrasured line of fortification meets the eye, and here and there, along its margin, the platforms of long-disused batteries, inclosed on three sides by grassy banks; harmless enough now, but formidable with cannon during the long French war, when privateers and hostile cruisers prowled the Chan-. nel. Then over the wooden bridge, and through the arched stone gateway of the fort, and there within are the buildings, partly in ruin, once used as barracks, magazines, and storehouses; and mounting to the embrasures you look towards Brixham and across the bay-Torquay gleaming in the sun-on one side; on the other to Sharkham Point, beyond which lies Dartmouth. The space inclosed by the defences is level, and of considerable extent; a walk of ten minutes brings you to the extremity of the Head, a square