of earlier England; these cities have usually swept
away the traces of antiquity they once possessed--tortuous streets are
straightened and widened, quaint old houses are thrown down, the
picturesque makes way for the useful; even the old churches are looked
at askance, as occupying ground that might be devoted to warehouses
and offices. In these quiet corners of the West such temptations have
not presented themselves; population is thin, and there is little call
for the destructiveness of expansion; mediaevalism may still be found
here, in the streets and byways, in the houses, and sometimes in the
people. The chief peril is in the intrusion of the summer holiday and
the "week-end." Irreparable damage is sometimes prompted by the desire
to attract visitors. But those who come to the West Country are not
usually such as seek for the noise and glare of the conventional
watering-place. They come for natural beauty, pure air, and quietude.
The recreative pleasure that they crave must be of a different kind
from that with which they can daily become familiar if they please.
There are theatres and music-halls in town; it does not add to the
wittiness of the Pierrot or the humour of the comic singer to find
them exercising their functions on a hot dusty beach, densely packed
with humanity, strewn with torn newspapers, burnt matches, orange
skins, and banana peelings. Yet those who feel in this manner are a
minority, otherwise certain popular resorts would be less
flourishing.

The crowds that flock to the average watering-place may leave their
toils behind them, but they apparently wish to carry their amusements.
Even the jaded mill-hand asks for the congested variety entertainments
of Blackpool or of Douglas, rather than for the solitudes of shore and
woodland. In moments of pessimism one may fear that the very capacity
of peaceful enjoyment is being killed, and that ceaseless grinding
work destroys the power of resting. When the ordinary tourist visits
places of peaceful solitariness he usually does so in crowds that
rifle and ravish the sacredness of this solitude; he ruthlessly
desecrates that which he does not understand; he never learns its
secrets; the most commonplace of public parks would have responded
fully to his needs and their gratification. But the West has long been
a resort of that wiser, certainly better endowed, minority that seeks
for direct personal contact with Nature, face to face, and not merely
as se