Blue Anchor, in which a Volunteer now holds sway over tap and spigot-host Richard Horswill, a soldier every inch of him, who will tell you many a tale of his experiences on the frozen steppes of the Crimea, the parched plains of India, and the flowery land of China, whenever you will step in and taste his white ale, of which delectable beverage more anon. Opposite the Anchor, on the left, our eyes wander along a dead wall, enclosing an excellent house, flanked with shrubberies, which commands from its upper windows a beautiful view of the estuary. This formerly belonged to a worthy old gentleman, Roger Ilbert Prideaux: at his death it passed, by purchase, into the hands of the late Mr. Samuel Beer, whose son now resides there. But lo! we are at the bottom of Fore Street: it is time to close this round-about chapter, and see what points of local interest demand a careful notice in our next.

CHAPTER II.

MR. NOTEWORTHY'S CORNER.

To have Mr. Friend's diabolus hard on my haunches, to find him perpetually treading on my heels to the abrasion and deplorable discomfort of the same, while I am turning out all the old drawers and nooks of memory's bureau to see what I can drag into daylight again respecting Kingsbridge, is a thing grievous to be borne. It must, however, be my endeavour for a season to appease the greed of the said inky imp for copy, and to be careful too how I bespatter him with hard names, lest, in remembrance of the wrong, he pelt me with "pie" next time I adventure myself into the Gazette Office.

Let us look leisurely up and down and backwards and forwards through the length and breadth of Kingsbridge, and see what jottings of fact and romance can be set down in Mr. Noteworthy's corner concerning the more goodly and notable buildings of the town, whether they be public or private, lay or ecclesiastic, in character. Certes! there is nothing to be said about the Vicarage, save that it bears an air of comfortable substantiality about it which causes it to appear to be a most delectable dwelling-house: the turnpike house, too, is barren and unprofitable; but not so Knowle House, which must be remembered as the residence of Colonel Montague, F.L.S. and M.W.S., an ardent and accomplished naturalist, author of the Ornithological Dictionary, Testacea Britannica, and other works. The large and valuable collection of animals and birds which the scientific Colonel had gathered during the last sixteen

years of his life at Kingsbridge, after quitting the army in 1799, was purchased at his death for £1100, by Dr. W. E. Leach, F. R. S., and placed in the British Museum, where it remains until this day. Below Prospect House, a narrow building with a long frontage, commanding a good view of the estuary, stands the conduit and engine house, which was inhabited by a family some seven or eight and twenty years ago, instead of a fire engine and leathern buckets as at present. Before this house there used, at the time I have mentioned, to prowl perpetually a dark-looking half-shaven man in grey, who was, in fact, the chief terror of my youthful existence. I believe he lived in the old poor-house of Kingsbridge, which stood nearly on the opposite side of the road, and was known by the name of Will Vincent. He had been a sailor, and, if I remember rightly, he had lost his wits after undergoing the barbarous punishment of keel-hauling, a mode of punishment now obsolete, luckily enough for unruly members of the British mercantile marine, which was inflicted by lowering the unhappy offender, secured along a stout cable, over the bows of the ship, and causing him to scrape acquaintance with every inch of the keel, until he had cleared the rudder, and was free to re-visit the deck again by a rough passage over the stern, full of salt water, and three parts dead at least. After passing Lower Knowle, Barnfield Cottage, and Tressilian, we come to Vine House on the left hand and on the right the Grammar School. Justice Hawkins mentions a house on the right, or west, side of the street, "which was once a banqueting house, where the Abbot of Buckfast used to keep Lent"; but I am unable to identify it with any existing building, or, indeed, with any building since destroyed, unless it be the old poor-house, which has been turned into the houses now occupied by Mr. King, stone mason, and Mr. Adams, carpenter, at the top of the town. The Endowed Grammar School, over which the Rev. A. Middleton now presides, is a stone building fronting the street, having

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