Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/485

Charles Dickens] described in one of our recent numbers —the orchestra sat in a pit on one side of the lower circle, and hell was represented by another hollow in the area.

Four miles from Perranzabuloe rises St. Agnes Beacon, six hundred feet from the sea level, and famous for the clay which the miners all over Cornwall use for the candlesticks in their hats. During the French war signalmen were stationed here beside a bonfire, ready to rouse the northern coast.

The crow is now so near either coast in this promontory of England that he can dart across with a few flaps of his wings to Fowey. This fishing town, on a hill overlooking an estuary environed by woody hills, was an energetic seaport in the reign of Edward the Third, to whose Calais-bound fleet it contributed forty-seven ships and seven hundred and seventy men; while Plymouth sent but twenty-six, and London only twenty-five. The "Fowey gallants," as they were called, grew at last so proud and aspiring, that they refused "to vail their bonnets" when passing Rye and Winchelsea, and when the cinque ports seamen launched out to enforce their right, flew at them, drubbed them, and drove them back into harbour. They grew so aggressive in Henry the Sixth's reign on the French coast that the Frenchmen fitted out a secret expedition, landed at midnight, and fired the wasps' nest of a town. The brave Cornishmen then retreated to Place House, which they defended; and eventually chased back the invaders to their ships. In Edward the Fourth's time the daring of the Fowey people degenerated into piracy, and the men of Dartmouth were ordered to confiscate their ships. The spirited little town never recovered this blow to its pride. The entrance to the harbour was, in Henry the Eighth's time, guarded by forts and a chain, a few links of which have been dredged up by fishermen. In the reign of Charles the Second the plucky little place saved a fleet of our merchantmen, and with its fort guns drove back a Dutch line-of-battle ship that was swooping at our vessels. In 1644 the Parliamentarian army surrendered here to the king, and Essex stole away by sea to Plymouth.

Hill-throned Redruth next for the crow, in its dreary country of copper mines, with steam pumping engines pulsing and stamping, and wheels turning, and metal carting off for the Swansea vessels. Underground, at a depth equal to five times the height of St. Paul's, swart Cornish men are busy with their picks and blasting powder. One mile off in the desolate country is Gwennap pit, the subsidence of a disused mine in the side of Carn Marth. This is the pit where Wesley, in the days of his persecutions, upheld by his love of God and his love of power, preached to thirty thousand rough miners. Though growing old at the time, his voice was distinctly heard by every one present. He was now seventy, yet his eyes were still keen and his nerves strong. A toilsome life had turned him into steel. He attributed his health to rising for fifty years at four, to preaching at five in the morning, to never travelling less than four thousand five hundred miles in a year, and never losing a night's sleep in his life. Two violent fevers and two deep consumptions, he said, had been his rough but useful medicines. "Ten thousand cares were no more oppression to him than so many hairs to his head." The Wesleyans still hold their Whit Monday anniversary in this consecrated pit. There is no doubt that, with all the dangers of Revivalism, Wesley did vast good in Cornwall; for before he came the fishermen were wreckers who never prayed but for a good storm to bring grist to their unhallowed mill, and the drunken miners believed in nothing but the Knockers, those lying spirits that led them in their search for copper. Cornwall, before his time, well deserved the name it had obtained of "West Barbary."

Carr Brea, a hill near Redruth, was, as Borlase fondly believed, the cathedral of the Cornish Druids. There is an old castle on the summit, now spoiled by modern fantasy. Near this Borlase found, or thought he found, sacred circles, pools of lustration, logans, and seats of judgment. All these rock basins and balanced stones are really only the result of time, that has sifted out the looser earth and left the harder strata bare to weather. Carr Brea, the giant, is a great man in Cornish legend, for here he threw granite blocks at the Devil, and he is now supposed to lie buried beneath the hill with one hand still emerging from the surface. The hand is apparently a granite block chopped into five gigantic fingers.

portion of that widely scattered empire of which little England fulfils the functions of heart and brain, is richer in nature's gifts than that which, not many years ago, was the scene of an actual life-drama as extraordinary as ever put romance to shame.

Severed by many a league of glistening sea from the maternal bosom, this singular spot suggests the image of a beautiful wilful child, who, thrust in sudden anger from its natural home, and, finding a place under alien skies, surrounds itself with conditions and characteristics that have little in common with its former life, without losing the energy and independent spirit which were its true inheritance.

Golden Isle—I cannot give it its legitimate name—possesses a climate and seasons, habits, laws, and language of its own. Somewhat difficult and dangerous of access, it has less intercommunication with the general family of mankind than any