There are, however, two towns which, whatever the differences in far back times may have been that led to division of strength where one might have imagined such a course undesirable, are nowadays connected by the old, weather-stained bridge of eight arches, on which and against the parapet of which the fishermen ashore lean and contemplate the river and harbour, and artists take up a vantage ground. This little port is indeed a delightful place, with a climate so mild yet withal so bracing that it threatens to turn this “sleepy hollow,” with its memories of past centuries, into a fashionable winter resort, and thus destroy it with that modern bane of picturesqueness--prosperity. A well-known writer has aptly summed up the delight of its quaint architecture, which, as well as its fisher types, has drawn painters from all parts to revel in its sheer delight. He says: “Such houses, never certainly except in some medieval town abroad, show such startling illustrations of the ideas of the old house builders, with gables quaint and rugged as Ruskin could have wished, or Turner desired to paint.” And there is, indeed, a charm in the narrow devious streets and the little Cornish courts, in which the fisherfolk sit mending or knitting nets, or the jerseys which will do as much as wool can do to keep out the bitter cold of dawn or winter nights. It is ages since the two Looes (East and West) became one by charter of Queen Elizabeth; but now, though we have left Devon and are in Cornwall, we have by no means left behind the memories of the strenuous life of fighting and piracy of old. And what has been said concerning many a Devon port and haven is equally true of Looe. It was probably (although, alas! records of the daring deeds and piratical descents of St Looe men upon the opposite Breton coast are much wanting) one of the most actively aggressive Cornish fisher towns. But we are sure of one thing, that Looe men were not less quick with the sword, flint lock, and culverin in the past, than with the trimming of sails and the handling of tiller; and that the harvests of blood, of fire, and of sword reaped along the French coast, which lay a hundred miles or so due south, were not less rich or risky of reprisals than those of the bold men of Dartmouth and Plymouth hard by.