Page:Cornwall (Mitton).djvu/132

 KING ARTHUR'S LAND 87 closely fitting. Yet the chasm below is so sheer and stern that no one can climb up the sides. The sea-birds know it. It was a happy chance for them that made this citadel free from the sullying steps of man, and the steep slopes of brilliant green amid the bare rock surfaces are peppered all over with them as if with a handful of comfits. The wild music of a host of gulls is the bag- pipes of the coast, and arouses the same feelings in the breast of the sea-lover as the pipes do in that of a Scotsman. It is associated with the sound of the surge and the deadly thrust and heavy swell at the foot of the tough cliff. These things tug at the heart of a sea-lover. Lying amid the prickly furze, sheltered for a moment from the deadly wind-whistle, and gazing across that un- scalable chasm, we have before us that gull- fortress exactly as it and its kind have been re- produced on the canvas of a well-known painter many many times. What business has he to do the thing so well that we are familiarized with the stern beauty of the haunts of the freest of birds, and feel when we see them in Nature that half the charm has been forestalled by the blunting of our sensibility ? It is no easy task to scramble along these rough