But there is Ilfracombe, with its rock-walled harbour, its little
wood of masts within, its white terraces, rambling up the hills, and
its capstone sea-walk, the finest 'marine parade,' as Cockneydom
terms it, in all England, except that splendid Hoe at Plymouth, 'Lam
Goemagot,' Gog-magog's leap, as the old Britains called it, over
which Corineus threw that mighty giant. And there is the little
isolated rock-chapel, where seven hundred years ago, our west-country
forefathers used to go to pray St. Nicholas for deliverance from
shipwreck,--a method lovingly regretted by some, as a 'pious idea of
the Ages of faith.' We, however, shall prefer the method of
lighthouses and the worthy Trinity Board, as actually more godly and
'faithful,' as well as more useful; and, probably, so do the sailors
themselves.
But Claude is by this time nearly sick of the roasting calm, and the
rolling ground-swell, and the smell of fish, and is somewhat sleepy
also, between early rising and incoherent sermons; wherefore, if he
takes good advice, he will stay and recruit himself at Ilfracombe,
before he proceeds further with his self-elected cicerone on the
grand tour of North Devon.
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