Now let us turn to a consideration of Ilfracombe to-day. People with a passion for comparisons and parallels--dear, good people who would trace a family likeness between an elephant and a dromedary--seek in conversation to find points of resemblance between Ilfracombe and (say) Torquay, Hastings, Brighton; half-a-dozen other seaside resorts. They are mostly amateurs at the art of discovering likenesses where they do not exist, and may be excused. But there have been those who in cold print have instituted resemblances. For these there is no excuse, acceptance, or encouragement. Ilfracombe is--just Ilfracombe, and not only does Ilfracombe insist upon its own individuality and declares “I am I,” but every other among the half-dozen naturally demands the like justice. The nearest parallel is, of course, to be found in this same county of Devon; but that is sufficiently remote, geographically, and in most other ways. A superficial likeness, in its hilly site, (and in its lack of sands) may be discovered to Torquay, but that is all. Torquay is in greater part residential and quietly aristocratic, with a tendency to pious works and clerical tea-fights: Ilfracombe is a “popular resort,” and becomes ever more so; with what it would be a mere inadequacy to term a “tendency” to open-air concerts and amusements for the crowd. We who stay, communing with nature, elegantly housed in the more refined hotels of Lynmouth, or the even yet primitive Clovelly, shudder at the August crowds at Ilfracombe, and recount across the dinner-tables, what time the tender evening closes in upon the quiet harbour, how we adventured there for half a day and watched the trippers at their strenuous tripping. Indeed, those who people Ilfracombe so numerously in the height of the season go there determined to have a “good time,” and expend a considerable amount of energy during the day in securing that desirable consummation; but when evening is come they unanimously clamour to be amused: hence the entertainments in the conservatory-like structure, known officially as the “Victoria Pavilion,” and unofficially and shamefully as the “Cucumber Frame”; and hence also the open-air concerts on the “Montebello Lawn,” and elsewhere: “Montebello” being a name, the most unprejudiced must agree, as little characteristic of Devon as are the “pierrots,” who make alleged fun for the aimless crowd. The days are indeed past when we were “insular.” We have, instead, become more than a thought too cosmopolitan. “Ods bodikins!” as Sir Richard Grenville might have said, “beshrew me, but these things like me not.” [Illustration: LANTERN HILL, ILFRACOMBE. [_After W. Daniell, R.A._ ]