ndred
feet above the sea, while the summit of Dunkery Beacon is fifteen
hundred, though rising but little above the moors that surround it; for
the road between Countisbury and Porlock is over twelve hundred feet
above the beach it overhangs. From Porlock the wooded valleys are more
frequent and more thickly wooded, and the villages lie nestled more
sleekly; the winds are less keen and strong, the sun itself seems more
tempered than when it blazes upon Heddon's Mouth; a more suave and
temperate beauty begins gradually to take the place of the wild open
spaces and grey cliffs.

The villages indeed are beautiful: Selworthy, Luccombe, and Wootton
Courtney, each with its lovely grey church, embowered in trees, its
street of whitewashed houses, its angles of light and shadow, and
gardens filled with colour. Luccombe, which is said to contain the
same Anglo-Saxon word _locan_, to enclose, as Porlock, lies under one
of the spurs of Dunkery on a little stream which falls into the Horner
Water, and is, indeed, enclosed in a steep wooded combe. The church
stands behind a tall row of cypresses, which, though planted only
seventy years ago, have grown as tall as the church-tower, and bear
witness to the fertility of the soil and the mildness of the climate;
they give the churchyard a foreign and outlandish look, I think, and
harmonize less perfectly with the characteristically English
architecture of the church than their neighbour, the old yew. The
tower is battlemented, and has some individual gargoyle heads around
its gutter, and the barrel roof of the interior has richly carved
wooden bosses, with the remains of painting upon them.

The church at Selworthy has also a carved and painted wooden roof,
though of finer workmanship than Luccombe; the church itself was
originally built of red stone, but the tower is the only part
remaining, and this has been covered with stucco. The window and
tracery of the south aisle is of the lightest and most delicate
Perpendicular, but the interior has been a good deal restored. The
church is beautifully situated. It lies high above Selworthy, and
before it stretch the long flat curves of Exmoor; below, Luccombe
Church tower can just be seen above its surrounding trees; to the
south-east, beyond the green luxuriance of Horner Woods, rises the
outline of Dunkery. From it a path leads down to Selworthy Green,
which is rather a famous beauty-spot, lying on the slope of a hill,
neatly sur