Sidmouth is in these days recovering something of its own. Not perhaps precisely in the same way, for the days of early nineteenth-century aristocratic fashion can never again be repeated on this earth. But a new vogue has come to it, and it is as exclusive in its new way as it was in the old; if not, indeed, more exclusive. More exclusive, more moneyed, not at all well-born, jewelled up to the eyes, and only wanting the final touch of being ringed through the nose. Oddly enough, it is a world quite apart from the little town; hidden from it, for the most part, in the hotels of the place. Most gorgeous and expensive hotels, standing in extensive grounds of their own, and all linked together in a business amalgamation, with the object of keeping up prices and shutting out competition. It is not easy to see for what purpose the patrons of these places come to Sidmouth, unless to come down to breakfast dressed as though one were going to a ball, and dressing thrice a day and sitting in the grounds all day long be objects sufficient. From this point of view, Sidmouth town is a kind of _dependence_ to the hotels, an accidental, little known, unessential hem or fringe, where one cannot wear ball-dresses and tiaras without exciting unpleasant criticism. Bullion without birth, money without manners are in process of revolutionising some aspects of Sidmouth, and it is quite in accord with the general trend of things that the newest, the largest, the reddest, and the most insistent of the hotels should have shoved a great hulking shoulder up against the pretty, rambling, white-faced cottage in Woolacombe Glen, where some earliest infant months of Queen Victoria were passed, and that it should have exploited the association by calling itself the “Victoria.” There is no river mouth at all at Sidmouth, and the Sid, which so plentifully christens places on its banks, has not water enough to force its way to sea, as a river should. Instead, it abjectly crawls through the pebbles of the beach, as though wishful of escaping observation; but when storms heap up sand and shingle and the Sid is denied even this humble outlet, then it becomes an urgent matter to hire labour for the speedy digging out a passage, lest the low-lying town should be flooded. [Illustration: WOOLACOMBE GLEN.] The sea-front of Sidmouth is, indeed, yet an unsolved problem. Many centuries ago, there seems to have been a harbour where the beach and the walk of the Esplanade now stand, the constant easterly drift of shingle being kept well out to sea by a cliff projecting from the Western end of the town, where its last remains, the Chit Rock, stood until 1824. But that protecting headland was gradually worn away and by sure degrees the river mouth was choked with shingle. It is much the same story as that which belongs to the Axe and to other rivers and obliterated harbours of South Devon.