From Ilsham you come, over the hill, to Meadfoot, a particularly noble bay, where the road is protected from the sea by a wall calculated to make a builder of cheap houses and nine-inch party-walls faint with horror at so prodigal a use of material. I do not know exactly _how_ thick the Meadfoot sea-wall is, but a wheeled conveyance could be driven along it, if it were not so rough. And the roughness of these rudely quarried, undressed rocky boulders is just the fitting character for the spot; which is, as I have said, a very noble piece of coast-scenery indeed, rough-hewed by nature in the large, and coloured by her in the rich and sober hues of the rocks, alternating with the brighter tints of sea and grass. Great islanded rocks stand off-shore, glooming over the blue sea like ogreish strongholds: the black monstrous forms of the Ore Stone and the Thatcher Rock, with the smaller Shag Rock close in, and a scatter of reefs just off the sands. Near by, but hidden from view by its enclosing grounds, is that semicircular group of villa residences, Hesketh Crescent, built, some forty years ago, on the model of the classic terraces of Bath and Buxton. Little postern gates lead from the grounds on to the road at Meadfoot, and from them the early riser on summer mornings may observe strange figures, clad in gorgeous dressing-gowns, shuffling in bath slippers to the sea, the bright sunshine making heliographs of their bald and shining pates. It all looks like some newer version of _Robinson Crusoe_, or the _Swiss Family Robinson_; but these old gentlemen are only the retired generals and colonels of Hesketh Crescent, out for their morning dip, and are so little like marooned inhabitants of uncivilised isles that they will presently enter their postern-gates again, and go home to breakfast and the morning paper, over which they will with fervour and unction damn the War Office and the Army from head to foot—a valued privilege denied to Robinson Crusoe. [Illustration: MEADFOOT, AND THE ORE STONE AND THATCHER ROCK.]