by a band of music, drank tea under the tall, spreading chestnuts at the end of the street, and the village generally took part in the holiday. "It does 'em good to have a little sport once a year," said the landlord of the King's Arms, while I drank my glass of cider; which is hardly to be doubted, only rural sport is too apt to degenerate into grossness. I asked him if it were possible for a man to become intoxicated on cider, as it seemed to me a sufficient quantity could hardly be swallowed to produce the effect. "It takes a smartish drop to do that," he answered; "but if you'll come in here in the evenin' you'll see some of the labourers swaller eight or nine quarts, and go away rolling drunk." Eight or nine quarts! How is it possible to force the bibulous appetite to such an extreme? and on thin, hard cider, too, sour enough to make a stranger shudder. The sweet cider sold in London is but little esteemed in Devonshire, the native palate not being satisfied without a smack of the opposite flavour. At the end of the village you cross the Otter, a small lively stream, winding through meadows and between the red scarped hills to the sea, some four miles distant. The footpath running along its margin tempted me; but for the moment the object which led from the coast had greater attraction—it was to see the house where Raleigh was born. If you have time, it is possible to get a sight of Bicton Gardens, about half a mile away to the right, said to be an exquisite specimen of horticultural art; there are, however, some things which the passing traveller must me away H make up his mind to forego, unless he wish to carry home none but tesselated reminiscences. Less than two miles farther and you come to Budleigh, a pretty village, enlivened by the noise of a swift-flowing brook, where one in search of health or quiet might find a peaceful sojourn. To see the lacemakers sitting at their doors, with pillow on knee, and plying their task with nimble fingers, was like going back a hundred years to a scene of homely industry. Turning off by a lane on the left, near the church, another mile brings you to Hays Barton-Raleigh's birthplace. It is a solitary farm-house- once the manor-house-built in the picturesque style of four hundred years ago, with gabled wings and portico, thatched roof, small mullioned windows, and a heavy oaken door thickly studded with iron nails, standing at the end of a garden, partly concealed by a few old trees that rise from among the herbs and flowers. At one side of the barton, in front, is a modern brick barn; but there are two or three sheds and stables built of cob on the other side, which keep up the olden character. The whole scene, shut in by low swelling hills and lines of tall hedges, is eminently rural; and how much more so in Raleigh's day. Just the place for a happy childhood. I knocked at the door: it was opened by a goodhumoured-looking damsel, who, to my inquiry as to whether it was true as I had read, that strangers were permitted to see the interior of the house, answered, "No it isn't. We used to show it, but had to give up ; people hindered our time so; and now they stand and look at it as long as they like, and then go away again." This was said with a smile, as if not meant seriously; and as she stood still at the halfopened door, seeming in no hurry to retire, we had a chat for some twenty minutes. I might sit under the porch for an hour if I pleased and look at the beehives and the old trees, and at the upper window on the left -the window of the room. There Raleigh was born. They had a book in the house containing his life and writings, but did not like it so well as Uncle Tom's Cabin. Did the gallant adventurer ever think of the quiet homestead in the days of his courtly prosperity? He could not have helped reverting to the hours of boyhood, when adversity overtook him; when he lay stricken with fever on the coast of Guiana, or during his long and weary imprisonment in the Tower. Was he thinking of the woods around Hays Barton when he wrote his Country's Recreations, and with a pen sobered by experience drew so true a contrast between the "anxious sighs and untimely tears" of courts, and the silent groves, downs, meads, and gliding fountains, which he tenderly apostrophises? Did recollections of innocent youth come back upon him when, in his after years of sorrow, he said: "Give me my Scallopshell of Quiet; My Staff of Faith to walk upon; My Scrip of Joy, immortal Diet; My Bottle of Salvation; My Gown of Glory, Hope's true gage, 719769 A To me, musing under the rustling leaves, while the scent of hay filled the air, there was a touching moral in the great man's history. Here the glad beginning; and far away, within the shadow of the court, its heroic ending. Whatever his faults, he deserved better than to lose his head by the executioner's axe, at the behest too of a king foolish enough to imagine that by tearing a leaf from the Journal of the Commons he could deprive the nation he misruled of their rights and liberties. I returned to Budleigh, and from there made my way back to the coast by the road, nearly three miles, leading to Budleigh Salterton. This is a village watering-place with a growing reputation, and not undeservedly; for it stands in a valley so narrow and well sheltered that myrtles grow in the open air all the year round, and like its namesake in the interior, it has a sprightly brook running by the side of the road, crossed by numerous light bridges to the trim gardens in front of the houses. A place of cheerful aspect. From an eminence on the beach the Otter is seen, vivacity left behind, creeping ingloriously through a marshy flat to the sea, where a long reef stretches out at one side of its mouth. The coal merchants here, wiser in their generation than some elsewhere, have laid a tramway across the pebbly shore, along which the laden trucks are hauled from the vessel. its As usual, a cliff sided hill on the west, and still of a red colour-West Down Beacon. Seats are placed at short intervals on the long sloping ascent; and from the top you can get a view of the three miles of cliffs which you may have missed by the visit to Hays Barton; and in the other direction, down to Torbay and Berry Head. To an unaccustomed eye there is something surprising in the successive headlands, each stretching farther and farther to seawards, that to walk to their extremity seems an endless task, so different from what it appears on the map, and you can scarcely help fancying that the last will take you far into the sunny regions of the south. Pacing the coast mile by mile for days together, you find England to be not so small a country after all. The path skirts the edge of the Beacon Cliff for some distance, and drops down to the small out-of-the-way village of Littleham, from whence to Exmouth by lane and highway is nearly three miles. About half-way down the descent on which the town is built you come to a broad terrace on the right, the Beacon-walks, with a grand hotel and rows of aristocratic-looking houses behind, and in front a shrubbery sloping away to the long sea-wall beneath, where trees, grass-plats, and winding paths make up a pleasant lounging-place. Before you spreads the estuary of the Exe, narrowed by encroaching tongues, islands, and a wild waste of sand on the opposite shore. That dark rugged point beyond Dawlish is the Parson and Clerk; there is Starcross, there the woods of Powderham; there, some ten miles up the valley, the towers of Exeter stand up massy against the clear evening sky; there the Haldon Moors, seeming a distant mountain range, |