AN ANCIENT FISHING TOWN. 213 



" Looe is known to have existed as a town in the reign of Edward I., and it 

 remains to this day one o 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 gardens of Looe, built up the acclivity on stone terraces one above 

 another, thus displaying the veritable garden architecture of the mountains of Palestine, 

 magically transplanted to the side of an English hill. Here, in this soft and genial atmosphere, 

 the hydrangea is a common flower-bed ornament, the fuchsia grows lofty and luxuriant 

 in the poorest cottage garden, the myrtle flourishes close to the sea-shore, and the tender 

 tamarisk is the wild plant of every farmer's hedge. Looking down the hills yet, you see 

 the town straggling out towards the sea along each bank of the river in mazes of little 

 narrow streets; curious old quays project over the water at different points; coast-trade 

 vessels are being loaded and unloaded, built in one place and repaired in another, all within 

 view; while the prospect of hills, harbour, and houses thus quaintly combined together is 

 closed at length by the English Channel, just visible as a small strip of blue water pent 

 in between the ridges of two promontories which stretch out on either side to the beach. 



" Such is Looe as beheld from a distance ; and it loses none of its attractions when 

 you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as a straight street in the place, no 

 martinet of an architect has been here, to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity. 

 Sometimes you go down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount an outside 

 staircase to get to the bed-rooms. Never were such places devised for hide-and-seek 

 since that exciting nursery game was first invented. No house has fewer than two doors 

 leading into two different lanes ; some have three, opening at once into a court, a street, 

 and a wharf, all situated at different points of the compass. The shops, too, have their 

 diverting irregularities, as well as the town. Here you might call a man Jack-of -all-trades, 

 as the best and truest compliment you could pay him for here one shop combines in itself 

 a smart drug-mongering, cheese-mongering, stationery, grocery, and oil and Italian line 

 of business ; to say nothing of such cosmopolitan commercial miscellanies as wrinkled apples, 

 dusty nuts, cracked slate pencils, and fly-blown mock jewellery. The moral good which 

 you derive, in the first pane of a window, from the contemplation of brief biographies of 

 murdered missionaries, and serious tracts against intemperance and tight lacing, you lose 

 in the second, before such fleshly temptations as ginger-bread, shirt studs, and fascinating 

 white hats for Sunday wear at two-and-ninepence a-piece. Let no man rightly say that 

 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 



