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 102 THE CORNWALL COAST being responsible for the discovery. Palgrave, who was with him, writes : " Our captain presently came forward with a tray and squat bottle, and said, with unimpeachable good manners, that he was aware how distinguished a passenger, &c., and that some young men sitting opposite, and he, would be much honoured if Mr. Tennyson would take a tumbler of stout with them." The poet gave a gracious response, and willingly drank the health of his admirers. But "presently the captain reappeared, and this time it was the ladies in the cabin who begged that the Laureate would only step down among them. But the height of that small place of refuge, Tennyson declared, would render the proposed exhibition impossible. Might he not be kindly excused ? The good women, however, were not to be balked ; and one after another presented her half-length above the little hatchway before us, gazed, smiled, and retreated." It was well for Tennyson that he had overcome some of his early shyness, or the ordeal might have tried him considerably. There was no cathedral in those days, rising with some- what foreign aspect from near the waterside ; but its germ was there in the old parish church of St. Mary's, which now welds the ancient and the modern into one beautiful and fairly harmonious whole. It is difficult to over-estimate the value of this old church as a component part of the new cathedral ; and the atmosphere that it sheds seems gently pervading the entire building, taking away the glare of its modernity, softening what might otherwise be crudity, and giving a vital sense of continuity to the worship of the bygone and the present. It may have been impossible to include more of the old church in the new edifice,