Primitive, indeed, are those villages that lie away back from the sea in these parts. First comes Kingmore, where the rock outcrops from the macadam in the main road, where the cottages are half-smothered in flowers, and where the domestic fowls that squatter and plunge in dust-baths in the middle of the street are the only signs of life. Reminiscences of the old window-tax are called up by a house with a walled-up window, carefully painted with a pretence of being a genuine one of panes and sashes. Even the brass catch has not been forgotten by the artist in illusion, whose treatment is so literal, he must have been the forerunner of the Newlyn School. The brass catch is rendered more than a thought too brassy, and the unfortunately painted panes are by no means convincing. But the deception although so grotesquely obvious, could not, under such opaque circumstances, be called transparent, could it? Like the Reverend Mr. Snell of Thurlestone, William Lane, rector of Ringmore, was a militant Royalist. He raised and trained a company of men and, laying hands upon some cannon, opened out a battery against the Parliamentary forces on their way to the leaguer of Salcombe. His exploit made him a marked man, and he was considered sufficiently important for an expedition to be sent against him by sea from the Parliamentary stronghold of Plymouth. The orders given the commander of this force were to capture and shoot the combatant cleric; but Mr. Lane, advised of what was afoot, took refuge in the tower of his church, where the secret room, provided with a fireplace, in which he hid is still to be seen. Here he lay three months, fed by his faithful parishioners, but was at last obliged to escape to France. At last, venturing to return, he worked for awhile as a labourer in the limestone quarries near Torquay, until his little dwelling was pillaged by a French privateer. He died at last when on his return from London, whither he had journeyed on foot to ventilate his grievances. The ancient church of Ringmore contains a relic of more recent strife, in the shape of an icon from Sebastopol. At Kingston, on the way across to the river Erme, there is but one inn. The “Sloop” is the name of it, and there, if you wait half-an-hour, while the cocks and hens run in and out of the rooms and passages, they will get you tea. There is very little of a Lyons’ or other tea-shop about the “Sloop.” And Kingston village is to match; primitive Devonian in style, which is a style partaking of all the characteristics belonging to the untamed villages of Cornwall, Ireland, and the Highlands of Scotland. There are very few of the type left now, which is a cause for thankfulness, or regret, as you will, and they ought to be preserved on ice and kept for the admiration, or otherwise, of posterity.