ult. Again I say it, therefore--walk,
and be merry; walk, and be healthy; walk, and be your own master!--walk,
to enjoy, to observe, to improve, as no riders can!--walk, and you are
the best peripatetic impersonation of holiday enjoyment that is to be
met with on the surface of this work-a-day world!

How much more could I not say in praise of travelling on our own
neglected legs? But it is getting late; dark night-clouds are marching
slowly over the sky, to the whistling music of the wind; we must leave
our bank by the roadside, pass one end of the old bridge, walk along a
narrow winding street, and enter our hospitable little inn, where we are
welcomed by the kindest of landladies, and waited on by the fairest of
chambermaids. If Looe prove not to be a little sea-shore paradise
to-morrow, then is there no virtue in the good omens of to-night.

* * * * *

The first point for which we made in the morning, was the old bridge;
and a most picturesque and singular structure we found it to be. Its
construction dates back as far as the beginning of the fifteenth
century. It is three hundred and eighty-four feet long, and has fourteen
arches, no two of which are on the same scale. The stout buttresses
built between each arch, are hollowed at the top into curious triangular
places of refuge for pedestrians, the roughly paved roadway being just
wide enough to allow the passage of one cart at a time. On some of these
buttresses, towards the middle, once stood an oratory, or chapel,
dedicated to St. Anne; but no vestiges of it now remain. The old bridge
however, still rises sturdily enough on its ancient foundations; and,
whatever the point from which its silver-grey stones and quaint arches
of all shapes and sizes may be beheld, forms no mean adjunct to the
charming landscape around it.

Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I.; and
it remains to this day one of the prettiest and most primitive places
in England. The river divides it into East and West Looe; and the view
from the bridge, looking towards the two little colonies of houses thus
separated, is in some respects almost unique.

At each side of you rise high ranges of beautifully wooded hills; here
and there a cottage peeps out among the trees, the winding path that
leads to it being now lost to sight in the thick foliage, now visible
again as a thin serpentine line of soft grey. Midway on the slopes
appear the