Then, armed with this formidable book, we explored the old parish church (Saint Saviour’s) of Dartmouth, and started off “at score” with the sketch of ironwork on the doorway of the south porch. “Exploration” seems quite the word for an examination of Dartmouth church: it is old and decrepit, and rendered dusky by wooden galleries--a wonderfully and almost inconceivably picturesque building, without and within, and (what is not often seen nowadays) a very much unrestored church. It was in 1887 (I think) that a scheme for restoration was set afoot, when the great controversy between the vicar and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings took place. The society wished the church to be let alone; the vicar wanted “restoration.” He plaintively remarked that the roof leaked on to him while he preached; and I seem to recollect that he was obliged to use an umbrella in the pulpit on wet Sundays, but of this I am not quite sure. [Illustration: ANCIENT IRONWORK, SOUTH DOOR OF SAINT SAVIOUR’S CHURCH, DARTMOUTH.] The outcome of this wordy war was a compromise: the roof was made watertight, and the restoration generally was dropped like a hot potato. Dartmouth church is closely girdled with old houses and steep streets, paved with painful but romantic-looking cobbles, and the churchyard rears itself high above the heads of wayfarers in the narrow lanes. Here is the town gaol, rarely or never used, save for the paternal detention of derelict drunkards, who, lest they should break their good-for-nothing necks down these staircase-streets, are locked within until the morrow comes, with sobriety and headache as co-parceners. [Illustration: ARMS OF DARTMOUTH ON THE OLD GAOL.] Dartmouth, you gather, who read municipal notices and proclamations fastened on the church door, is a composite borough--Clifton-Dartmouth-Hardness is its official style and title; but it would, I suspect, puzzle even antiquarians to delimit their respective territories at this time. We idly culled the information as we passed one morning for a day’s excursion to Dittisham. XLIV. They call it three and a half miles from Dartmouth to Dittisham; we made it, I should say, about eight; but there is no occasion for any one who essays to follow our route to emulate this shocking example. Those eight miles were all either up or down hill. A spirit-level wouldn’t get the ghost of a chance anywhere along these lanes, for, the moment you get atop of a hill, it begins to descend again. We had just reached the bottom of a long hill when we met a countryman of whom we inquired the way. “Did ye coom from oop yon?” said he. “Yes,” we replied, with forebodings of disaster. “Then you’ve coom aout of y’r way,” he said; “ye’ll have to go oop and take th’ next turn to th’ right.”