Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/538

530 depth of shade. It may be true, indeed, as my companion remarks, that these green tunnels through which we are passing will become mere ruts on the country-side in winter, and as such hateful alike to horse and man; but, doubtless also, they have their charm now, in these summer hours, with that faint under-murmur which ripples through their arches—the stir and rustle and hum which is coupled, in my mind at least, with the sweet sense of all that manifold change and growth, and life as various as the stars in heaven, which is going on around us. Here and there on the deep hedges are patches of the white wood Orchis lingering still, and the rarer bunches of the great Campanula—rarer, that is, in Cornwall—stand up,

the birds—surely I saw the pied fly-catcher (Muscicapa atracapilla) among them—flit in and out amidst the foliage; and, through the twisted branches, fall, now and again, wreaths of the sunlight at our feet; while, listen, for the best part of the way, a little brook steals on singing to itself by the roadside, half hidden in graceful masses of the tall Osmunda, which in such profusion I have never seen before, and the no less graceful though slighter fronds of the delicate lady-fern.

Soon we quit the lanes, however, and leaving the beautiful valley of Llanherne, with its convent embosomed in the quiet of century-old trees, on our right hand, come out on a broad patch of moorland, with the pink and white and purple Erica piled up on the low sandy banks, which are the only boundaries upon either side of the track way; the Blechnum shooting its green spikes in profusion, and long trails of the honey-suckle drooping from no one can say where. A few steps further and a lifting of the horizon, with a breath of fresher air coming at the same moment—a filling as it were of new vigour—suddenly ensued, and at once the sea bursts upon our view, gleaming, rolling, fading far away into the distance, of that deep pure beautiful colour, the true ultra-marine tint, which only a Cornish sea, so far as I know, possesses, and which Mr. Hook, as I think, alone among artists, can paint. The day, it should have been stated, has been hot and sultry enough hitherto, and, with a sort of obstinate patience of its sultriness have we been toiling for the last hour along the buried lanes; but now, as if cheered at that prospect, it is not only at an accelerated but with an exhilaration in our pace that we make through an enclosure or two for the open downs beyond. Across the beds of sea-pink, decaying generation upon generation for these hundreds of years past, our feet sinking deeper in its soft cushions at every step we take, until we stand at the cliff-edge. A most glorious coast truly, glorious and more glorious (exclaims the more enthusiastic of the two), and then we gazed in silence. Have I not said, or at least hinted, that we were both of us somewhat of experienced voyageurs, had travelled and seen much, and read of a great deal more? yet I grant the most patriotic Cornubian at once that nowhere, at no time, had we looked on a scene like this. Twenty miles of cliff, a hundred of rolling water outspread before us—a score or more of lesser bays, each with their own golden sands and gleaming promontory indented within the embrace of the one noble bay. Let me particularise a little. Far away to the left as we gaze is Newquay—quaint little fishing village, or town is it?—perched far out on its own headland, its whitewashed walls shining as even the “body”. so loved of Churchwardens will shine in the sun. Then comes another headland between us and it, but this time bare and lonely, and with nothing of the feeling of humanity which even those distant houses give; and then the same, or what looks like it; each enclosing the same quiet space of water, and each with the same “wild sea-light” about its feet. Then these are repeated over and over again, I know not how many times, in the sweeps, (lessening towards us gradually,) of that grand curve in the centre of whose arc we stand. This is the view on that side. We turn—and again the coast line rushing outward in the same reckless, abrupt way:—rugged, weather stained, beaten; of every imaginable line it spreads before us—point after point sinking in softer and softer outline; the view bounded at last, on this hand also, by one long, low, grey cape, on which is a lonely lighthouse seen like “a white-winged angel,” says my companion, against the deep, pure blue sky. Behind that latter point are Padstow and Tintagel, for these are the “thundering shores” not of “Bude” but of “Bos,” which lie before us. “A glorious coast”—Yes! and almost ceasing to be terrible in the peaceful quiet which is over it all now. Peaceful, pleasant enough truly, with the waters gleaming in the sunlight yonder, rippling with a faint, low music around