F

FAIR DEVON

OR three distinct districts of England a similar claim is made. Kent, the Isle of

Wight, and Devonshire is each in turn declared to be "the garden of England."

To decide among these contestants might be as dangerous an undertaking as that which fell to the lot of Paris. The county of Kent has undeniable charms: its gently undulating landscape, its peaceful farms, its picturesque hopgardens and oasts, its venerable churches and castles, all combine to create a memory of enchanting beauty. Nor is the Isle of Wight less liberally endowed with nature's favours or romantic memorials of human history. Yet, when all pleas have been entered and weighed, no other verdict is possible than that Devonshire is the fairest, the most beautiful of all English counties. And in reaching that conclusion it may be that the factor which influenced Paris is not inoperative; for the daughters of Devon are the Helens of England.

Of course a Devonian is a prejudiced witness. Yet the eulogy of one such may be cited, chiefly because it suggests some of those qualities which are still characteristic of the county. William Browne, the Elizabethan poet who sang "Britannia's Pastorals," saluted Devonshire in these proud lines:

Hail thou, my native soil! thou blessed plot,
Whose equal all the world affordeth not!
Show me who can so many crystal rills,

Such sweet clothed valleys, or aspiring hills;

Such woods, grand pastures, quarries, wealthy mines,
Such rocks in which the diamond fairly shines;
And if the earth can show the like again,
Yet will she fail in her sea-ruling men.
Time never can produce men to o'ertake
The fames of Grenville, Davies, Gilbert, Drake,
Or worthy Hawkins, or of thousands more,
That by their power made the Devonian shore
Mock the proud Tagus; for whose richest spoil
The boasting Spaniard left the Indian soil
Bankrupt of store, knowing it would quit the cost
By winning this, though all the rest were lost.

Remembering how potent a part the sons of Devon bore in the overthrow of the Spanish Armada, Browne's pride in his county is pardonable. Neither in the sixteenth nor any later century has any other district of England bred so many "sea-ruling men." Even were that

not true, Devon has glory enough in numbering among her children Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of that dauntless sea-fight which rivals the glory of Thermopylæ.

Some items in Browne's catalogue of praise may have been deleted by the hand of time, and it is questionable whether the rocks" in which the diamond fairly shines" ever existed; but in the main the attractions of Devon are unchanged. Yet, lest disappointment usurp the place of realized expectations, one warning should be laid to heart. The county will not give up its charms to the hasty traveller. He who clings to the steel highway of the railroad, who makes towns and cities the boundaries of his explorations, and dashes in speed from one "sight" to another, will leave the county wholly ignorant of its peculiar beauties. There is no district in England where it is so essential to desert the beaten track, to cut one's self off from communication with conventional transport; where the byways are infinitely more than the high

ways.

One word frequently recurrent in Devonshire speech holds priceless suggestion for those to whom it is more than a name. It is the word "combe," a geographical term of distinctive

West country use. To harmonize with its broad Devonshire pronunciation it would be better spelt "coombe," but even that concession to phonetics will fail to represent the melody of the word on native lips. And neither pen nor painter's brush can hope to render justice to that product of the Devon landscape for which the word stands. Combes, as Eden Phillpotts explains in "My Devon Year," have a distinction of their own, "and few natural scenes can be compared with these deep hollows and sudden valleys. They might be likened to miniature presentments of the Derbyshire dales, or Scottish glens made tame and tiny and sleepy. They might be called denes or dingles, straths or dells, or any other word that stands to mean a sequestered place within the lap of high lands. Some of our combes," Mr. Phillpotts continues, " open gradually, through pastures and orchards, from the hills to the plains; some break out in steep gullies and embouchures of limestone or sandstone to the sea; some are concavities, where Nature hollows her hand to hold man's homestead. Gentle depressions between red-bosomed hills, wide meadows extending to the estuaries of rivers, sharp rifts echoing with thunder of waves, and upland