Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/650

1, 1861.] larger clasp, and with a shriek fell back again upon my pillow; for the miniature and the lock of golden hair were both gone! B. B.

is scarcely any spot left in our island at once so beautiful and so retired as the Cornish side of the River Tamar, between Pentillie and Cothele. There are deep valleys, shut in by great rounded hills, which are well clothed with forest trees; the glens crossing and recrossing, intersecting each other at various angles, and each with its own little gushing stream buried in moss and fern. If you have not been in Cornwall, you don’t know what moss and fern are: so green, so soft and luxuriant the moss, rejoicing in the mild, damp atmosphere which seems to cling to it, and draw out that peculiar mossy smell. And the fern—it is impossible to describe the beauty of its great spreading leaves, bending gracefully over the chattering stream underneath—the one so still and majestic, the other so restless and noisy.

I feel as if it were almost sacrilege though to take you into these haunts at all. Their chief attraction to me is that they are utterly solitary, shut out from the great bustling world around us all. It is not that I dislike the energy and activity which seem to be ever on the increase in our London streets, but it is most soothing, even to one untinctured by any morbid sentimentality, to find a place abounding in lovely scenery, and yet but rarely visited by one’s fellow men. It is not easy to find such a place in all Europe at the present day. I recollect a carman telling me one day, as he was driving me through the pass of Nant Francon, North Wales, that it was a place not frequented by ordinary tourists, and truly at that time Lake Ogwen did seem solitary enough, but has not the Saturday Review told us all about it? Surely in future you will be in danger of meeting there Mr. Sarcasm on his summer tour. But our valleys on the banks of the Tamar are not yet penetrated by the excursionists, who throng the steamers for Weirhead and the celebrated Morwell Rocks. I frequently take a walk in these valleys at all seasons of the year, and as yet I have met no one but some school-boys going to their home by the river-side, or the woodman at work among the trees. The Church town, as the country people call our little hamlet, is placed just at the head of one of these valleys. The grey old tower, covered with green and orange lichens, which grow everywhere in this moist climate, is surrounded by a little knot of fir-trees. A walk of about a mile and a-half from the church, through the valleys, brings you to a well-rounded hill, covered with larch and spruce-fir.

As we follow the road which winds up this hill, we can look back over the retreating valleys through which we have passed, and at last, when we get to the top, we have a glorious view over Dartmoor—its distant hills bounding the horizon with a bold undulating outline. From hence we can see Brent Tor, mentioned by Kingsley in his “Westward Ho!” You can just distinguish the church