commence an acquaintance with Devonshire lanes, keep the road. On the right, opposite to a large limestone quarry, is a narrow recess, that might be taken for a little dell overhung with trees, and at the end of it a low flat arch fringed with hart's-tongue-the entrance to the quarry. It is a gloomy passage hewn out of the solid rock, just wide enough for the trucks on which the stone is drawn out, turning soon to the left beyond the reach of daylight, and continuing onwards for five hundred yards into the bowels of the hill, with branches running off in all directions. Should the miners be at work within, one of them will answer your shout, and come with his candle, to serve as guide. But though he will show you the huge masses that bear up the superincumbent roof, and the holes where smugglers, as is said, used to conceal their unlicensed merchandise, the passages are so damp and dreary that to penetrate them is somewhat of a penance. Some people like such adventures. I don't: and after groping my way in till empty space was undistinguishable from solid rock, I was glad to return to the sunshine outside. The stone dug from the quarry is good for building purposes, as it hardens by exposure, as may be seen in many cottage walls in the neighbourhood; but it is less worked now than formerly, and the adventurous visitor must not reckon on always finding a guide to attend his summons.

CHAPTER V.

Boundary Lines-Differences of Dialect—Varied Scenery - Weston Mouth-The Red Cliffs-Clay and Crystal-Sidmouth-The Beach -High Peake― Ladram Bay - Otterton-Cob Cottages-Ciderdrinkers-Hays Barton-Raleigh's Birthplace-No AdmittanceBudleigh Salterton-West Beacon - Littleham-Exmouth - The Ferry-The Warren-A Twilight Dilemma-Dawlish.

WHATEVER political economists may say in favour of parallelograms, one sees when walking about this dear old England of ours that the boundaries of her counties were not drawn by mere arbitrary expediency. They who first made the divisions were truer to nature than we, and drew the lines of demarcation around the shires by a principle which, as may still be seen after the lapse of a thousand years, seldom misled. Strange as it may seem that crossing a stream but a few feet wide should introduce you to different landscape, different dialect and habits, it is nevertheless a fact, and to the traveller an interesting one. Why leave home if we are always to see the same sights and hear the same sounds? If a Devonshire peasant pronounce Sir as though spelt Sur, and with complete indifference to the value of pronouns says, "Hur's a-goin' along o' we," and brings peculiar local words, not understood else

where, to aid his utterance, we have only to remember that he but repeats a few surviving sounds from the old Anglo-Saxon speech, and we shall hardly regret he speaks not with the tongue of Middlesex. "The smallest difference," says a philosopher, "acquires value by constancy;" and the homely dialect which connects us by a living link with the dead past is a valuable illustration of self-perpetuating phenomena.

You will not have been many hours in Devonshire before becoming aware of more than ordinary differences: you have entered a distinct part of the island. The distance in a direct line from Lyme Regis to the bottom of Bridgewater Bay is not more than thirtyfour miles; the country beyond has thus somewhat the character of a peninsula. Of this, which comprehends nearly five thousand square miles, not more than about one hundred are level; all the rest is uneven and hilly, and such as presents striking contrasts. Rocky and desolate wastes, wild table-lands rising high in the interior, are cut up on their outskirts by glens and gorges teeming in their sheltered depths with the vegetation denied above. These, expanding into wooded valleys and broad fruitful vales branching in all directions, are watered by the thirty-four rivers of the county, along the courses of which the scenery varies, from the romantic and picturesque to the sylvan and pastoral. There are spots of beauty even in the dreariest moors; and then the lanes! which seem to be deep grooves left between the cultivated fields for Nature to frolic in. The climate, too, so soft and genial, that

along the southern shores the rigours of winter are almost unknown; and plants that must be tenderly nursed in other places grow and flourish in the open air. Many who go to foreign lands find less to interest them than is to be seen in Devonshire.

From Branscombe again westwards. The road runs along a pleasant valley which has been likened to some of the rural scenes of Switzerland. When you come to the church-an ancient edifice dedicated to St. Winifred-turn off by the path on the left through the churchyard, up the wooded hill beyond, where the ascent is so steep as to render the cool shade of the trees doubly welcome. You will need to pause at times for breath; but once on the top the cliffs are not far off, and there the breeze from the sea blows with invigorating freshness. The height is more than three hundred feet: you can see the Heytor Rocks on Dartmoor, which seems a sullen mountain mass some distance inland, and ahead are the magnificent red cliffs of Sidmouth-the glory of this part of the coast. Here and there an old limekiln has the appearance of an old fort ruined by long service, yet still looking forth across the sea; and in places below the small banks of undercliff are turned to account by cultivation, with potato-plots and little fields close to the water's edge. Snug sites these for a cottage residence; secure against all intrusion from the surly north.

Three miles of this, and you look down on Weston Mouth, another glen, where another brook tumbles into the sea near another coast-guard station. You must de

scend cautiously, for the path is precipitous; and when you are on the shingle, Dunscombe Cliff, which shuts in the western side of the Mouth, assumes a gigantic elevation. It is more than three hundred and fifty feet high. A path winds up in the rear leading to Salcombe Down, by which you may get to Sidmouth, three miles farther; or, should the tide be out, along the beach. I chose the latter route, wishing to see the crimson cliffs from below as well as above. Their structure is interesting, the prevailing colour being chequered by veins and patches of gray and yellow, with here and there a stray lump of chalk in which flints are imbedded. In some places threads of water perpetually trickling down have worn deep channels in the hardened clay; a little farther, and you see the effect of copious springs; the cliff is washed into deep gullies, and lumps of all sizes come sliding down the saturated slopes, multiplying the heaps below, and running across the beach in red slimy streams. The process of waste is going on before your eyes, from small to great; but greatest when the sea, dashing on the shore in its wrath, undermines the solid cliff, and with tongue of foam licks off the fallen masses by thousands of tons. The demolition that takes place all round our coasts every year is almost incredible to those who have paid no attention to the subject. At one point the accumulation of large flints washed out of the clay made a barrier not easily passed; and the whole line of beach is pebbles, walking on which will try your patience. The Chesil Bank would soon disappear were the advance of pebbles from the west to be checked;