The Carys had so long been seated by the shores of Tor Bay, in the halls of the discredited and dispossessed monks, that they had lost all sense of the trend of affairs, and were utterly unimaginative; and accordingly when in 1786 Sir Robert Palk, retiring wondrously enriched from the governorship of Madras, and with an £80,000 legacy into the bargain, purchased Tormoham Manor, they made no attempt to outbid him. To the changed times and to the Palk family Torquay owes its growth. Tor Bay had in all those bygone centuries been a lovely solitude, for in the warlike ages, when fire and sword swept even sheltered spots like Dartmouth, snugly hidden behind a difficult entrance, an open strand was too dangerous a place to settle upon; but Sir Robert Palk early perceived changed conditions and made his account with them, and in due time his son, Sir Lawrence Palk, succeeded him and built the first harbour. The inevitable consequence of the Palk activities and of the changed condition of affairs was that the town of Torquay sprang into vigorous existence, and the further and equally obvious consequence of the Palks becoming great as ground-landlords was that in the fulness of time they were raised from baronets to be barons; Sir Lawrence Hesketh Palk, fifth baronet, being in 1880, in his thirty-fourth year, raised to the peerage as Baron Haldon. I can quite distinctly hear gnashings of teeth and imprecations at lost opportunities from the direction of Tor Abbey, echoing down the alleys of the years. Torquay was built when the Italian villa fashion prevailed in the land. It was a favourable spot for such an experiment. Look back upon those terraced and rock-girt hills from this kindly distance of the harbour, and the Italianate character of the scenery, in its brilliant colouring and bold and picturesque outline, is obvious, and from this remove quite a number of those villas deceptively resemble in outline the marble palazzos of Florence, of Venice or Bologna. But close at hand they are no more Italian than an Italian warehouse, which we all know to be a parabolic description of an oil and colour shop. And now Torquay has acquired a Mayor and Corporation, with town arms and a crest and the advertising motto, _Salus et Felicitas_, and ought to _be_ happy as well as healthful, as per motto: even though that motto does, when spoken, suggest “sailors and solicitors.” But no! Torquay has since learned that these luxuries are expensive; in the facts that while, when the town was incorporated, in 1892, there were then but twenty-one officials, whose salaries amounted to £2,413, there are now thirty-nine, who draw £5,495. Presently there will be electric tramways at Torquay! Conceive it, all ye who know the town. Could there be anything more suicidal than to introduce such hustling methods into Lotos-land?