When the excursionist from London sees the yellow sands and rippling sea, the red rocks, the green lawns, and the sliding rivulets and miniature cascades of Dawlish from the railway platform, he is unhappy, because the place looks so charming, and he is going to leave it for places he knows not, but which (he thinks) cannot begin to compare with this fairyland. But Dawlish is seen at its best from the railway station and under such hurried circumstances. The place affords little satisfaction when one comes to the exploration of it. The town is bright and lively, and the sands crowded in summer, and the sea-wall well frequented, but Dawlish lives only for and on the visitor; when its short season is done and the visitors have departed, there is (consequently) no business of any kind. It is just a little town, bandbox neat, called into existence by these touring times, and in the spring, autumn, and winter it is as deserted and woebegone as any dead city of the plains. For here is no port, nor river, nor any anchorage, and, for all that is doing in winter months, the inhabitants might hibernate like the dormouse and not miss anything. [Illustration: MOUNT PLEASANT.] Dawlish Station is built on the sands, and the Great Western Railway runs along under the cliffs, on a sea-wall of solid masonry, from Langstone Point, through the five tunnels of Lee Mount and Hole Head, to Teignmouth. Dawlish did not detain us long. We dusty pilgrims shunned the spick-and-span society of summer frocks and immaculate blazers, and fared forth up the steep paths of Lee Mount on to the highroad for the distance of a mile, when we walked down Smugglers’ Lane to the sea again, where the Parson and Clerk stand at the extremity of a precipitous headland--the Parson on the face of the cliff, the Clerk cooling his heels in the water. For the recognition of the faces supposed to be seen on the sandstone rock, the Eye of Faith is imperative: but many folk possess that. [Illustration: LEE MOUNT, DAWLISH.] XXXV. There is a legend accounting for this petrified couple. It seems that the vicar of a neighbouring parish had business with his bishop at the Palace of Exeter. He set out late in the afternoon, on horseback, for the city, accompanied by the parish clerk, and, a storm coming on, they promptly lost their way in the mist and rain; the incessant flashes of lightning, brilliant as they were, would not have sufficed for them to regain their road, even had their horses been less terrified. The vicar was speedily drenched to the skin. “Damme,” says he, “there’s not a soul at hand of whom to inquire our way in this misbegotten wilderness. I’d take the devil himself for a guide if he were here.”