You may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of 'em--the primroses are out, but then you are in--the Cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the Clouds are continually vieing with them--the women like your London people in a sort of negative way--because the native men are the poorest creatures in England--because Government never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth's Sonnet, 'Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent!' the degenerated race about me are Pulvis ipecac. simplex--a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I'd make a descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having Cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they'd run away into the Methodist meeting-houses, and the women would be glad of it.... Such a quelling Power have these thoughts over me that I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy the flowers, all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them--I feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soap-froth. I think it well for the honour of Britain that Julius Caesar did not first land in this County. A Devonshirer standing on his native hills is not a distinct object--he does not show against the light--a wolf or two would dispossess him. A man of west-country descent should have known better. Why did not the ghost of William Browne of Tavistock arise and check Keats's hand, and recite for his rebuke the burst in praise of Devon from _Britannia's Pastorals_, with its happy echo of the Virgilian _Salve magna parens_ and _Haec genus acre virum_?-- Hail thou my native soil: thou blessed plot Whose equal all the world affordeth not! Shew me who can so many christall rills, Such sweet-clothed vallies, or aspiring hills, Such wood-ground, pastures, quarries, wealthy mines, Such rocks in whom the diamond fairly shines: And if the earth can shew the like again; Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men. Time never can produce men to o'er-take The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake, Or worthy Hawkins or of thousands more That by their power made the Devonian shore Mock the proud Tagus.