Westward Ho! is all too soon disclosed to the disillusioned eye. You see it, as you come along the ridge road, occupying the flat lands and the sandy wastes beside the sea, with the famed Pebble Ridge extending towards the Burrows. The scene is a beautiful display of colour: the dark-blue sea, light-blue sky, yellow sands, blue-grey line of pebbles and green salt-marshes, with the Braunton lighthouse a dab of white on a distant shore. But Westward Ho! is chiefly a sad collection of forlorn houses, dressed in penitential grey plaster. Kingsley wrote a romantic novel compact of patriotic fervour, love of Devon, of England, and of Elizabethan seafaring derring-do. He placed one of the most dramatic of his scenes--the interrupted duel--here, on “Bideford Sands.” You recollect the incident: Grenville intervening between the combatants, and his “Hold! Mr. Cary,” a fine moment; but it is Failure, not Romance that here meets the eye to-day. The fame of the novel, “Westward Ho!” brought thousands of pilgrims into these parts, and aroused great enthusiasm. At that time these sands were lonely in the extreme. Not a single house stood upon them. But the astonishing success of that book led to the spot being “discovered” and duly exploited. Enterprising persons, finding that Bideford town was, after all, not a seaside resort, conceived the idea of founding a place which, with its sea-bathing advantages, should become in time as popular as, say, Weston-super-Mare. But they forget the fact--an enormous factor in the fortunes of such places--that, being on the way to nowhither, there was no railway here, and that there, consequently, never could be, by any chance, an easy and convenient approach from any large town whence holiday-makers come. Thus forgetful “Westward Ho!” was founded. A hotel designed on a scale large enough for the considerable town expected to develop was the first care, but the place has never prospered, and failure is everywhere insistent. Three-fourths of the houses are empty and the others are chiefly occupied by people who wonder why they ever came--and wish they hadn’t. These are those who by some cruel fate of necessity--choice or pleasure are surely out of the question--are anchored here. But no thought of this fate crossed the minds of those projectors. They saw a brilliant future awaiting Westward Ho! and impressed others with their confidence. A “Kingsley Memorial College” was built, and a “United Services College” followed. Both are now closed and add their own note of melancholy to the otherwise sufficiently dismal place.