[Illustration: TAWSTOCK CHURCH, DEVONSHIRE.] Barnstaple, like Bideford, while a very old town, has few old-time relics now left. It has become a manufacturing town, its chief product being Barum ware, an inexpensive grade of pottery. The Golden Lion Inn, once a residence of the Earl of Bath, is famed as a place of solid comfort, and still retains much of the gorgeous decorations done by its former occupant. The poet Shelley had an odd association with Barnstaple. When living at Lynton, after his marriage with Harriet Westbrook, he came to Barnstaple and spent some time in bringing out a pamphlet scurrilously attacking the chief justice who had sentenced to prison the publisher of the works of Thomas Paine. One of the poet's associates, who distributed the pamphlets, was sentenced to six months in jail, and Shelley narrowly escaped by hastily leaving the town. The road from Bideford through Barnstaple and Ilfracombe is rather uninteresting, save the last few miles, which pass through wooded hills and along deep verdant valleys. Ilfracombe is a resort town, pure and simple, and we found few hotels on a grander scale than the Ilfracombe, standing in beautiful grounds facing the sea, which murmured almost directly beneath our open windows. It was a beautiful evening; the tide was just receding from the jutting rocks scattered along the coast, whereon the sea, even in its mildest moods, chafes into foam; and one can easily imagine a most awe-inspiring scene when the angry ocean, driven by a westerly wind, assails these bold, angular rocks. After having visited every resort town of note in England, our recollection is that of all, Ilfracombe is the most strikingly situated; nor do any of them command views of a coast line more rugged and picturesque. The rain was falling heavily when we came to Dunster on the following day and the abbey church was gloomy indeed. And what can be gloomier than an old church on a gray day, when the rain pours from the low-hung clouds and sweeps in fitful gusts against the mossy gravestones and crumbling, ivy-clad walls? A scene that renders one solemn and thoughtful on almost any occasion becomes positively depressing under such conditions. And though we recall Dunster Church with associations not unpleasing in perspective, the surroundings were not altogether pleasing at the time. We found the caretaker, a bent old woman, in the church, but she informed us that there were really two churches and that she had jurisdiction over only one of them. However, she conducted us about the dimly lighted building, gloomy indeed from the lowering skies without, and our recollection of her story of the quarrel that resulted in the partition of the church has faded quite away. But we do remember the rood screen which has fourteen separate openings, no two wrought in the same pattern and altogether as marvelous a piece of black-oak carving as we saw in England.