ASPECTS OF ILFRACOMBE. 7 



Yet, as I said, there were lights under which the town 

 looked well ; but what will not light transform into beauty ? 

 One evening, after a shower, I was called away from the 

 Microscope to look at the town under the light of the set- 

 ting sun, some peculiar arrangement of the clouds, with a 

 vivid rainbow, having thrown a delicious evening tinge over 

 the houses piled on the sides of the hill, and merged the 

 ugliness of their forms in exquisite floods of colour. In this 

 lioht Ilfracombe looked handsome. It looked resplendent,, 

 like a stupid man in the splendoui' of a noble deed. 



If unblessed Avith the fatal (but agreeable) gift of beauty, 

 the little town of Ilfracombe, as a compensation, is uncursed 

 with the appearances of pretension. Except on those two 

 unfortunate terraces, it gives itself no airs of fashion, no 

 demure hypocrisies of respectability. It has no magnificent 

 hotels ; it has no popular preacher. It makes nobody miser- 

 able. Simplex munditiis ; a plain face, but clean and honest, 

 sirs ! I was continually reminded of some small German 

 town, and the simple honesty and obligingness of the people 

 helped the resemblance. As we enter from the Braunton 

 road, there is a white-washed inn, now untenanted, of the 

 most primitive structure, and bearing the words 



BEATJNTON INN, 



painted in tall brown letters, all along the frontage, which I 

 never passed without some vague reminiscence of Germany 

 rising up, so exactly does this turn of the road repeat many 

 turns of road I have come upon in my wanderings. An 

 avenue of mountain-ash, with their bright red clusters bril- 



