-studs, and fascinating
white hats for Sunday wear, at two and ninepence apiece. Let no man
rashly say he has seen all that British enterprise can do for the
extension of British commerce, until he has carefully studied the
shop-fronts of the tradesmen of Looe.

Then, when you have at last threaded your way successfully through the
streets, and have got out on the beach, you see a pretty miniature bay,
formed by the extremity of a green hill on the right, and by fine jagged
slate-rocks on the left. Before this seaward quarter of the town is
erected a strong bulwark of rough stones, to resist the incursion of
high tides. Here, the idlers of the place assemble to lounge and gossip,
to look out for any outward-bound ships that are to be seen in the
Channel, and to criticise the appearance and glorify the capabilities of
the little fleet of Looe fishing-boats, riding snugly at anchor before
them at the entrance of the bay.

The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred; and are as good-humoured
and unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The
Fisheries and the Coast Trade form their principal means of subsistence.
The women take a very fair share of the hard work out of the men's
hands. You constantly see them carrying coals from the vessels to the
quay in curious hand-barrows: they laugh, scream, and run in each
other's way incessantly: but these little irregularities seem to assist,
rather than impede them, in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the
men, one absorbing interest appears to govern them all. The whole day
long they are mending boats, painting boats, cleaning boats, rowing
boats, or, standing with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats.
The children seem to be children in size, and children in nothing else.
They congregate together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious
conversations, in a dialect which we cannot understand. If they ever do
tumble down, soil their pinafores, throw stones, or make mud pies, they
practise these juvenile vices in a midnight secrecy which no stranger's
eye can penetrate.

In that second period of the dark ages, when there were High Tories and
rotten boroughs in the land, Looe (containing at that time nothing like
the number of inhabitants which it now possesses) sent Four Members to
Parliament! The ceremony by which two of these members were elected, as
it was described to me by a man who remembered witnessing it, must have
been an impressiv