The place is as much a surprise as ever in broad daylight. One might be in Spain or Italy. Donkeys travel up and down the weed-grown cobble steps carrying projecting loads balanced on their backs. Indeed, one is quite surprised to hear the people speaking English, or rather Devonshire, the prettiest dialect. In the daylight the little balconied-houses overhanging the sea look more like pigeon-cots nailed to the steep rock, and one almost wonders how the inhabitants can get in. Long may Clovelly remain as it is now, the quaintest little place in England! [Illustration: CEILING IN THE GOLDEN LION, BARNSTAPLE.] The town of Barnstaple is an excellent centre for exploration, and the antiquity of the "Golden Lion" is a guarantee of comfort. It was a mansion of the Earls of Bath, and upon a richly moulded ceiling, with enormous pendants of the date of James the First, are depicted biblical subjects, including the whole contents of the Ark, or a good proportion of it. The spire of the church of SS. Peter and Paul looks quite as out of the perpendicular as the spire at Chesterfield. There are some good Jacobean tombs, but nothing else in particular. The aged inmates of the almshouses point out the bullet-marks in their oaken door, made when the Royalists fortified the town in 1645. Lord Clarendon, who was governor of the town, tells us that here it was Prince Charles first received the fatal news of the battle of Naseby. The prince had been sent to Barnstaple for security. The house he lodged at in the High Street was formerly pointed out, but has disappeared. The poet Gay was a native of the town, and early in the nineteenth century some of his manuscripts were discovered in the secret drawer of an old oak chair that had passed from a kinsman on to a dealer in antiques who lived in the High Street. Close to the town is Pilton, whose church is full of interest. The carved oak hood of the prior's chair, which dates from Henry VII.'s reign, serves the purpose now to support the cover of the font. At the side may be seen an iron staple to which in former years the Bible was chained. From the fine Gothic stone pulpit projects a painted metal arm and hand which holds a Jacobean hour-glass. The screen and parclose screen are also good, and the communion rails and table in the vestry are of Elizabethan date. The church pewter is also worth notice, as well as an old pitch pipe for starting the choir. The porch bears evidence that the tower was roughly handled when Fairfax captured Barnstaple in 1646. The existing tower was built fifty years later.