Page:The Cornwall coast.djvu/258

 252 THE CORNWALL COAST it is more likely to be a century or two later. Visitors must not expect to learn much about the saints or about the monuments from the country folk, either here or anywhere else in Cornwall. With luck they may get a few quaint notions and superstitions out of the older people; but the younger folk are educated in a different manner now — universal school systems tend to uniformity and usually to a deadening of the imagination. For the legends and traditions of the country-side it is necessary to go to the guide-books, which are themselves often misleading. If a traveller were to go through Cornwall compiling a book that should contain solely what he saw and heard, it would be something quite different from the ordinary handbook, and those who only know the Duchy by reading about it would be chiefly struck by its omissions. The people, here as elsewhere, no longer care much for the traditions of their forefathers ; and the delightful literary works that belong to topography are the result and the supply of a culture in which the ordinary men and women of the localities have small share. The visitor should carry the best literary guide he can procure with him, otherwise he is hkely to learn little of the country's lore and its antiquities — unless now and then he applies to a clergyman or perhaps an intelligent schoolmaster. The days of oral tradition have passed for ever. We need not complain when we remember that written litera- ture is a result of this decease.