Believe me, Claude, you will not stir
from the place for a month at least. For be sure, if you are sea-
sick, or heart-sick, or pocket-sick either, there is no pleasanter or
cheaper place of cure (to indulge in a puff of a species now well
nigh obsolete, the puff honest and true) than this same Ilfracombe,
with its quiet nature and its quiet luxury, its rock fairyland and
its sea-walks, its downs and combes, its kind people, and, if
possible, its still kinder climate, which combines the soft warmth of
South Devon with the bracing freshness of the Welsh mountains; where
winter has slipped out of the list of the seasons, and mother Earth
makes up for her summer's luxury by fasting, 'not in sackcloth and
ashes, but in new silk and old sack;' and instead of standing three
months chin-deep in ice, and christening great snowballs her 'friends
and family,' as St. Francis of Assisi did of old, knows no severer
asceticism than tepid shower-baths, and a parasol of soft grey mist.
III.--MORTE.
I had been wandering over the centre of Exmoor, killing trout as I
went, through a country which owes its civilization and tillage to
the spirit of one man, who has found stag-preserving by no means
incompatible with large agricultural improvements; among a population
who still evince an unpleasant partiality for cutting and carrying
farmers' crops by night, without leave or licence, and for
housebreaking after the true classic method of Athens, by fairly
digging holes through the house walls; a little nook of primeval
savagery fast reorganizing itself under the influences of these
better days.
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