Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/84



, have you ever been in Cornwall? I don’t mean to ask if you have passed through it on the coach road, along the bleak hills and sterile tracts which constitute, as it were, the backbone of the county; nor even if you have visited the attractions which lie in the usual track of the few tourists who venture into such a remote and out-of-the-way district. But have you ever struck out paths for yourself? Have you ever, contemning the adventitious aids of coaches, carriages, or horses, set forth on foot to explore it, with stick in hand and knapsack on shoulder? If not, you may be acquainted with some of its scenes of desolation; you may be even familiar enough with cromlechs, rock-basins, and logan-stones, but can know comparatively little of its beauties. To see these, you must wander among tho beetling cliffs and spacious caverns of its north coast; the beautiful rivers and sweeping bays of its south; and the sunny nooks and lovely valleys of its interior—and many such valleys are to be found scattered about, sometimes, too, in close proximity to barren wastes and dreary moors. Often you may roam over bold wild hills, where huge masses of granite lie piled in strange fantastic forms, with no trace of vegetation around you, save the brown heath and the tall fern, or that ever-present feature in Cornish scenery, the golden-blossomed furze, whilst a roaring torrent rushes foaming and struggling in its rocky channel at your feet. You follow its course, and, sometimes by degrees, sometimes suddenly, as if transformed by the magician’s wand, the naked granite and feathery fern give place to beautiful leafy woods; and the rapid torrent, as though it felt the influence of the scene, calms down into a gurgling, murmuring stream—now lingering in its course, and spreading out into a black silent pool, like a miniature lake, which the hills, still steep and abrupt, and jutting into each other on either side, seem to shut in from all the world as with a leafy wall; and then again, shutting its eyes, as it were, as if anxious to make up for the time it had loitered away, and rushing on with blind haste under the overhanging banks and against the mossy atones—strongholds of the speckled trout and regal salmon.

In one of the loveliest of these valleys—perhaps the loveliest—the sweet Vale of Dunmeer, stand the ruins of a house, or rather cottage, for it can scarcely be called more. It has long been deserted and ruinous—long before the memory of any one at present alive in the neighbourhood—yet its decay has been slow and gradual: the hand of Time itself seems to have passed over it with a gentle and sparing touch, and even man, often the more remorseless depredator of the two, has not molested it. Though the roof and part of the walls have fallen in, not a stone has been removed; even the garden before it, though, of course, long since overgrown with weeds and briars, still remains. Situated in the most secluded part of the valley, its crumbling walls, thickly covered with ivy, can scarcely fail strongly to impress the mind of the beholder—more strongly, perhaps, than is often the case even with more majestic ruins.

A strange story is related concerning the fate of the last inhabitants of this cottage: it was told me by the hostess of a little inn in the