Estuary, and thence to Modbury and down to Kingsbridge; or, should you prefer to see Plympton (five miles east of Plymouth, on the upper road), where Joshua Reynolds was born, you may keep that road until after you've passed Ivybridge, and then drop down to Kingsbridge through the beautiful valley of the Avon.

Kingsbridge is at the head of the Salcombe Estuary; and at Salcombe, six-and-a-half miles below, James Anthony Froude lived, wrote, and is buried. He was born at Dartington, two miles north of Totnes, to which you're bound. If you are a lover of Froude, you may want to go down to Salcombe to see his home and his grave. Froude was savagely criticized in his lifetime for his 'constitutional inaccuracy,' and the tendency to discredit him has not abated; but he wrote history in a way that made it fascinating to thousands, and many of us revere his memory for that. So you may like to have these verses which were published about the time of Froude's death, in the 'Saint James Gazette':

Now when heroic memories pass
Like sunset shadows from the grass,
When England's children cry and stir
Each for himself and few for her,

We may think tenderly of one
Who told, like no unworthy son,
Her history, and who loved to draw
Champions a younger England saw.

We act no critic's part, and when
They rank him less than lesser men,
We feel the golden thread that goes
To link the periods of his prose.

Perhaps our busy breathless age
That leaves unopened history's page
Had need of hands like his to strike
Imperial chords, Tyrtean-like.

From Kingsbridge, go on to Torcross and up to Dartmouth.

The Pilgrims spent a week in Dartmouth, while the Speedwell was being repaired; but my guess is that you will be amply satisfied with a half-hour or so. A glimpse of the Butter Walk, perhaps a peep into Saint Saviour's Church, a glance at the castle, a general impression of the whole picture, and then (perhaps) a ten-mile steamer ride up the river, in about an hour-and-a-quarter, to Totnes. Dartmouth was an important harbor in Edward III's day; so it was natural that Chaucer should have a Dartmouth sailor among his Canterbury pilgrims.

Towns, you know, like to boast of their antiquity. And Totnes, not satisfied with a history which shows it to have been important in Saxon times, has endeavored to outdo those neighbors who vaunt Roman remains, by claiming a foundation earlier than that of Rome, and of the same stock. Below one of the two remaining gates of her town wall, Totnes cherishes a stone called the 'Brutus Stone,' said to mark the spot where Brutus of Troy first set foot on English soil.

Do you know Brutus of Troy? I don't. It is true, however, that sundry caverns hereabouts have yielded many things that throw important light on prehistoric man, thousands of years before Brutus of Troy man that hunted the lion, the rhinoceros, the mammoth, and the sabre-toothed tiger, here in this northern land; man that had the impulse to embellish, and sometimes carved the horn of a beast he had killed.

If you are interested in prehistoric man, you should plan to visit Kent's Cavern at Torquay and perhaps Philip's Cavern at Brixham, five miles south of Torquay, where William of Orange landed, in 1688, to claim the English throne.

Totnes has many picturesque old houses whose overhanging upper stories, supported on pillars, form a covered way for foot-passengers. Its castle, founded soon after the Norman Conquest, is in ivy-clad ruins, as is the old priory -in part; the priory church has a number of interesting tombs and effigies dating from the fifteenth century and later.

Totnes is about ten miles from Torquay.

I wonder if you'll be able to tear yourself away from Torquay on her seven hills, after no more than a glimpse? Not many people find it easy to resist her allure. But the motor-traveller, so transcendently privileged, has some few disadvantages to remind him that he is of the mortals, still! - and one of them is that, unless he is supremely rich in time, and also in money (so that he may loaf serenely in a place like Torquay while his car does him only scant service), he must resist the temptation to linger as long as he'd like.

Should you be economizing on motor-hire at this part of your trip, you can reach Torquay from Plymouth by train in an hour, make your South Devon headquarters here, and fare forth on day excursions to Dartmouth and Totnes; to Cockington, the picture-village whose gardens and thatched cottages the artists are forever painting; to the extremely picturesque ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle; to Dartmoor; and so on. Then go up to Exeter; and pursue your way Londonwards either by the North Coast of Devon, or by the South. If you stop at Torquay, consider the Hydro Hotel.

And now for Exeter, which is twenty-two miles from Torquay.

The thing about Exeter that every writer quotes was said by Freeman - Edward Augustus Freeman, the English historian and writer on architecture. The sentence

of his that is almost invariably quoted about Exeter is that no other English city 'can trace up a life so unbroken to so remote a past.'

I shall not try to trace it for you. I may be very far from guessing the truth about you; but I don't believe you want it traced. It is my notion that there are places where almost every one wishes to feel the long, long continuity of human life and struggle, and to particularize it; and other places where all we desire is a general sense of mellowed age and perhaps to meet with a favorite ghost or two.

Just why, in a most lovely city with a history 'so unbroken to so remote a past,' I am not moved to wander, hopeful of a meeting with the shade of Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror or some of their Briton or Roman predecessors or their Angevin or Tudor successors, I can't say. I'm glad they were all there, but I don't care to have them popping out of corners telling me what they did.

I can wander, for hours, in and about Exeter Cathedral, all the while in an ecstasy of emotional enjoyment, without encountering a ghost I know. I don't know what Exeter does with her ghosts; but it may be that, having so many, she doesn't encourage them to walk.

The hotel which used to call itself the Butt of Malmsey has now memorialized the royal duke (brother of King Edward IV and King Richard III) who was drowned in London Tower in a butt of malmsey wine, by using his name instead of his penultimate destination for its signboard, and is known as the Royal Clarence. It is in Cathedral Yard, facing the north side of the cathedral, and 'hard by' Mol's Coffee House where the famous, far-faring sea-dogs of old Devon (Hawkins, Gilbert, Drake, Raleigh) used to foregather. I commend it to you, heartily; and I'm trying not to envy you for being there, with your first glimpse of the interior of Exeter Cathedral awaiting you, after luncheon.