Seaton is in process of rising, and to all who have witnessed the evolution of a seaside town from fishing village to “resort”--that is sufficient to say _Verb. sap. sat._ It possesses a terminal railway station on a branch line, and is the scene of Sunday “there and back” excursions from London in the summer season. On those occasions the place is crowded for a brief three hours or so, when trippers snatch a fearful joy. At other times Seaton is sluggish and dull, and really the bourgeois plastered buildings of the little town are an insult to the magnificent scenery on either hand. Visitors there were a few on the beach--quiet folk mostly, and provincial of aspect, save indeed a loathly Cockney worm who had by some mischance missed his Margate, who leaned against a seaworn capstan, the sole representative of his particular stratum of civilisation--lonely, ineffable. [Illustration: “LOATHLY WORM.”] When the rain came down that had been impending all the forenoon, Seaton became doleful. There was nothing to do but take the next train to Exeter in search of a waterproof civilisation. XXX. Preconceived ideas are, when not realised, apt to disturb one’s peace of mind, and so it happened that we, who had conjured up a mental picture of Exeter, had indeed imagined a vain thing: the reality came upon us with something of a rude shock. Used to the more familiar type of cathedral city, dreamy old places where the atmosphere of the Minster is all-pervading, and where the Bishop, the Dean and Chapter, and their doings hold the foremost rank in men’s minds and talk, we were not prepared to come upon so busy a place as Exeter, where the ecclesiastical element is only one among many and is not pre-eminent. There is, indeed, no holy calm in the “Queen City of the West:” the tramway bell is familiar in its streets, and from end to end of the main thoroughfares tall telegraph poles lend an American air to the view. But Exeter, although entirely different from one’s dreams, is extremely interesting and picturesque: its slums are the dirtiest, and their smells the vilest of any out of London, and the ancient rotten tenements the most tottering of any I have seen. Yet there be those who like not mention of the place. These are evil-doers, for whose benefit the Assizes are holden at the picturesque fifteenth century Guildhall, so conspicuous an object in the busy High Street. There is a fine old highly coloured character in English history, Richard III. to wit (who, if history speaks truly, fully deserved a place amongst the malefactors of his age), who had, according to Shakespeare, no occasion to love Exeter. The incident may be read in Richard III., Act iv., Scene 2:-- “Richmond!--when last I was at Exeter, The mayor in courtesy show’d me the castle, And call’d it--Rouge-mont: at which name I started, Because a bard of Ireland told me once, I should not live long after I saw Richmond.”