a grey stone arch toward the sea, not unfraught with dead rats and cats, who, their ancient feud forgotten, combine lovingly at last in increasing the health of the blue-trousered urchins who are sailing upon that Acherontic stream bits of board with a feather stuck in it, or of their tiny sisters who are dancing about in the dirtiest pool among the trawlers in a way which (if your respectable black coat be seen upon the pier) will elicit from one of the balconied windows above, decked with reeking shirts and linen, some such shriek as—­

“Patience Penberthy, Patience Penberthy—­a!  You nasty, dirty, little ondecent hussy—­a!  What be playing in the quay-pool for—­a!  A pulling up your pesticoats before the quality—­a!” Each exclamation being followed with that groaning grunt, with which the West-country folk, after having screamed their lungs empty through their noses, recover their breath for a fresh burst.

Never mind; it is no nosegay, certainly as a whole:  but did you ever see sturdier, rosier, nobler-looking children,—­rounder faces, raven hair, bright grey eyes, full of fun and tenderness?  As for the dirt, that cannot harm them; poor people’s children must be dirty—­why not?  Look on fifty yards to the left.  Between two ridges of high pebble bank, some twenty yards apart, comes Alva river rushing to the sea.  On the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white canvas-covered boats, and a flag-staff with sloping cross-yard, betokens the coast-guard station.  Beyond it rise black jagged cliffs; mile after mile of iron-bound wall; and here and there, at the glens’ mouths, great banks and denes of shifting sand.  In front of it, upon the beach, are half-a-dozen great green and grey heaps of Welsh limestone; behind it, at the cliff foot, is the lime-kiln, with its white dusty heaps, and brown dusty men, its quivering mirage of hot air, its strings of patient hay-nibbling donkeys, which look as if they had just awakened out of a flour bin.  Above, a green down stretches up to bright yellow furze-crofts far aloft.  Behind a reedy marsh, covered with red cattle, paves the valley till it closes in; the steep sides of the hills are clothed in oak and ash covert, in which, three months ago, you could have shot more cocks in one day than you would in Berkshire in a year.  Pleasant little glimpses there are, too, of grey stone farm-houses, nestling among sycamore and beech; bright-green meadows, alder-fringed; squares of rich red fallow-field, parted by lines of golden furze; all cut out with a peculiar blackness, and clearness, soft and tender withal, which betokens a climate surcharged with rain.  Only in the very bosom of the valley, a soft mist hangs, increasing the sense of distance, and softening back one hill and wood behind another, till the great brown moor which backs it all seems to rise out of the empty air.  For a thousand feet it ranges up, in rude sheets of brown heather, and grey cairns and screes