the smallest degree imposed upon, in Cornwall.

Another hour, slowly driving down the gradual slope of the country, through a mining district much more cheerful than that beyond Marazion. The mines were all apparently in full work, and the mining villages were pretty, tidy, and cosy-looking, even picturesque. Approaching St. Ives the houses had quite a foreign look, but when we descended to the town, its dark, narrow streets, pervaded by a "most ancient and fish-like smell," were anything but attractive.

As was our hotel, where, as a matter of duty, we ordered tea, but doubted if we should enjoy it, and went out again to see what little there seemed to be seen, puzzling our way through the gloomy and not too fragrant streets, till at last in despair we stopped a bland, elderly, methodist-minister-looking gentleman, and asked him the way to the sea. He eyed us over. You're strangers here,

ma'am?"

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I owned the humbling fact, as the inhabitant of St. Ives must doubtless consider it.

"And is it the pilchard fishery you want to see? It is just beginning. A few pilchards have been seen already. There are the boats, the fishermen are all getting ready. It's a fine sight to see them start. Would you like to come and look at them?"

He had turned back and was walking with us down the street, pointing out everything that occurred to him as noticeable, in the kindest and civilest way. When we apologised for troubling him, and would have parted company, our friend made no attempt

to go. "Oh, I've nothing at all to do, except he took out the biggest and most respectable of watches- 66 except to attend a prayermeeting at half-past six. I should have time to show you the town; we think it is a very nice little town. I ought to know it; I've lived in it, boy and man, for thirtyseven years. But now I have left my business to my sons, and I just go about and amuse myself, looking into the shop now and then just for curiosity. You must have seen my old shop, ladies, if you came down that street."

Which he named, and also gave us his own name, which we had seen over the shopdoor, but I shall not record either. Not that I think the honest man is ever likely to read such "light" literature as this, or to recall the three wanderers to whom he was so civil and kind, and upon whom he poured out. an amount of local and personal facts, which we listened to-as a student of human nature

is prone to do with an amused interest in which the comic verged on the pathetic. How large to each man seems his own little world, and what child-like faith he has in its importance to other people! I shall always recall our friend at St. Ives, with his prayermeetings, his chapel-goings I concluded he was a Methodist, a sect very numerous in Cornwall-his delight in his successful shop and well-brought-up sons, who managed it so well, leaving him to enjoy his otium cum dignitate no doubt a municipal dignity, for he showed us the Town Hall with great gusto. Evidently to his honest, simple soul, St. Ives was the heart of the world.

By and by again he pulled out the turniplike watch. "Just ten minutes to get to my prayer-meeting, and I never like to be late, I have been a punctual man all my life, ma'am," added he, half apologetically, till I suggested that this was probably the cause of his peace and success. Upon which he smiled, lifted his hat with a benign adieu, hoped we had liked St. Ives-we had liked his company at any rate and with a final pointing across the street, "There's my shop, ladies, if you would care to look at it," trotted away to his prayer-meeting.

I believe the neighbourhood of St. Ives, especially Tregenna, its ancient mansion transformed into an hotel, is exceedingly pretty, but night was falling fast, and we saw nothing. Speedily we despatched a most untempting meal, and hurried Charles's departure, lest we should be benighted, as we nearly were, during the long miles of straight and unlovely road--the good road-between here and Penzance. We had done our duty, we had seen the place, but as, in leaving it behind us, we laughingly repeated the nursery rhyme, we came to the conclusion that the man who was "going to St. Ives" was the least fortunate of all those notable individuals.

DAY THE ELEVENTH.

The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St. Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard, if after journeying thus far, and looking forward to it so many years, the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day! Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some of

us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so till the hand is dust.

It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out on the dawn, grey and misty, but still not wet. To be just on the point of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare enough to have a certain pathos in it. We slept again, and trusted for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering sungleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky.

Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead of a tumultuous week-day, conscience smote us in driving through Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with, had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."

But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful vegetation about Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory which forms the extreme point westward of our island. The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting to school or church, with their books under their arms.

We passed St. Buryan's-a curious old church founded on the place where an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. There was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude, till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated Logan or rocking-stone.

From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable specimen in England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?

"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving, But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."

Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point on which it rests.

Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since. By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges." Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.

"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.

And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been much readier than his tongue, I, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself a somewhat anxious-minded old hen-and watched my chickens climb triumphantly that enormous mass of stone.

"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must honestly confess I could not see it stir a single inch.

However it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones around it were equally huge and most picturesquely thrown together. Also-delightful to my young folks!-they furnished the most adventurous scramble that heart could desire.

The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas, Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.

"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."

“ ) ! ”

I forbear to translate the worlds of meaning that were involved in that brief exclamation.

"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more when we have ceased to be hungry."

The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour of the let me give it its right name First and Last Inn, of Great Britain.

"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here. "It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."

At which we felt altogether humbled; but in a few minutes more, our contrition passed into sovereign content.

We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the house, and then we recognised where we were-standing at the extreme end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further into the sea.

That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who is Infinity, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence, one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be.

At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand lonely place.

But this bliss could not be ; so we proceeded to make the best of what we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh wind-there must be always wind--and the air felt sharper and more salt than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating too, so that one's nerves were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do anything, without fear and without fatigue. So that when a guide came forward a regular man-of-war's-man he looked-we at once resolved to adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was accustomed to go."

"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is the young ladies might go but you-" eying eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and good humour, "you're pretty well on in years, ma'am."

Laughing, I told him how far on, but that I was able to do a good deal yet. He laughed

guide, composedly, as he pointed to the boiling whirl of waters below.

Still, though a narrow and giddy path, there was a path, and the exploit, though a a little risky, was not foolhardy. We should have been bitterly sorry not to have done it not to have stood for one grand ten minutes, where in all our lives we may never stand again, at the farthest point where footing is possible, gazing out upon that magnificent circle of sea which sweeps over the submerged "land of Lyonesse," far, far away, into the wide Atlantic.

There were just two people standing with us, clergymen evidently, and one, the guide told us, was "the parson at St. Sennen." We spoke to him, as people do speak, instinctively. when mutually watching such a scene, and by and by we mentioned the name of the long-dead curate of St. Sennen's.

The "parson" caught instantly at the name. "Mr. ? Oh, yes, my father knew him quite well. He used constantly to walk across from Sennen to our house, and take us children long rambles across the cliffs, with a volume of Southey or Wordsworth under his arm. He was a fine young fellow in those days, I have heard, and an excellent clergyman. And he afterwards married a very nice girl from the north somewhere."

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Yes; we smiled. The "nice girl" was now a sweet silver-haired little lady of nearly eighty; the "fine young fellow" had long since departed; and the boy was this grave middle-aged gentleman, who remembered both as a tradition of his youth. What a sermon it all preached, beside this eternal rock, this ever-moving, never-changing sea!

But time was passing-how fast it does pass, minutes, ay, and years! We bade adieu to our known unknown friend, and turned our feet backwards, cautiously as ever, stopping at intervals to listen to the gossip of our guide.

"Yes, ladies, that's the spot-you may see the hoof-mark-where General Armstrong's horse fell over; he just slipped off in time, but the poor beast was drowned. And here, over that rock, happened the most curious thing. I wouldn't have believed it myself, only I knew a man that saw it with his own eyes. Once a bullock fell off into the pool below there just look, ladies." (We did look, into a perfect Maëlstrom of boiling waves.) "Everybody thought he was drowned, till he was seen swimming about, unhurt. They fished him up, and exhibited him as a curiosity."

And again, pointing to a rock far out in the sea.