self and his wife in two castles, he being slain in the one, and she married to the victorious King Uther Pendragon, in the other.

Both looked so steep and dangerous in the fast-coming twilight that we thought it best to attempt neither, so contented ourselves with a walk on the cliffs and the smooth

green field which led thither. Leaning against a gate, we stood and watched one of the grandest out of the many grand sunsets which had blessed us in Cornwall. The black rock of Tintagel filled the foreground; beyond, the eye saw nothing but sea, the sea which covers vanished Lyonesse, until it met the sky, a clear amber with long bars like waves, so that you could hardly tell where sea ended and sky began. Then into it there swam slowly a long low cloud, shaped like a boat, with a raised prow, and two or three figures sitting at the stern.

66

King Arthur and the three queens," we declared, and really a very moderate imagination could have fancied it this. "But what is that long black thing at the bow?" "Oh," observed drily the most practical of the three, "it's King Arthur's luggage."

Sentiment could survive no. more. We fell into fits of laughter, and went home to tea and bed.

DAYS THE FOURTEENTH, FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH.

-And all Arthurian days, so I will condense them into one chapter, and not spin out the hours that were flying so fast. Yet we hardly wished to stop them; for pleasant as travelling is, the best delight of all is-the coming home.

Waking, to one more of those exquisite autumn days, warm as summer, yet with a tender brightness that hot summer never has, like the love between two old people, out of whom all passion has died-we remembered that we were at Tintagel, the home of Ygrayne and Arthur, of King Mark and Tristram and Iseult. I had to tell that story too, in the briefest form, how King Mark sent his nephew, Sir Tristram, to fetch home Iseult of Ireland for his queen, and on the voyage Bragswaine, her handmaiden, gave each a lovepotion, which caused the usual fatal result; how at last Tristram fled from Tintagel into Brittany, where he married another Iseult "of the white hands," and lived peacefully, till, stricken by death, his fancy went back to his old love, whom he implored to come to

him. She came, and found him dead. A tale of which the only redeeming point is the innocence, simplicity, and dignity of the second Iseult, the unloved Breton wife, to whom none of our modern poets who have sung or travestied the vague, passionate, miserable, ugly story, have ever done full justice.

These sinful lovers, the much-wronged but brutal King Mark, the scarcely less brutal Uther Pendragon, and hapless Ygraynewhat a curious condition of morals and manners the Arthurian legends unfold! A time when might was right; when every one seized what he wanted just because he wanted it, and kept it, if he could, till a stronger hand wrenched it from him. That in such a state of society there should ever have arisen the dimmest dream of a man like Arthur-not perhaps Tennyson's Arthur, the "blameless king," but even Sir Thomas Malory's, founded on mere tradition-is a remarkable thing. Clear through all the mists of ages shines that ideal of knighthood, enjoining courage, honour, faith, chastity, the worship of God and the service of men. Also, in the very highest degree, inculcating that chivalrous love of woman-not women -which barbaric nations never knew. As we looked at that hoar ruin sitting solitary in the sunny sea, and thought of the days when it was a complete fortress, inclosing a mass of human beings, all with human joys, sorrows, passions, crimes-things that must have existed in essence, however legend has exaggerated or altered them-we could not but feel that the mere possibility of a King Arthur shining down the dim vista of longpast centuries, is something to prove that goodness, like light, has an existence as indestructible as Him from whom it comes.

We looked at Tintagel with its risky rock-path. "It will be a hot climb, and our bathing days are numbered. Let us go the other way to Bossinney Cove."

We

Practicality weighed against poetry !—and poor poetry always kicks the beam. went to Bossinney.

Yet what a pretty cove it was! and how pleasant! While waiting for the tide to cover the little strip of sand, we re-mounted the winding path, and settled ourselves like seabirds on the furthermost point of rock, whence, just by extending a hand, we could have dropped anything, ourselves even, into a sheer abyss of boiling waves, dizzy to look down into, and yet delicious.

So was the bath, though a little gloomy, for the sun could barely reach the shut-in cove, and interfered with considerably by

not tourists-but a line of donkeys! They were seen solemnly descending the narrow cliff-path, one by one-eleven in all-each with an empty sack over his shoulder. Lastly came a very old man, who, without taking the least notice of us, disposed himself to fill these sacks with sand. One after the other the eleven meek animals came forward and submitted each to his load, which proceeding occupied a good hour and a half. I hardly know which was the most patient, the old man or his donkeys.

We began some of us to talk to his beasts, and others to himself. "Yes, it was hard work," he said, but he managed to come down to the cove three times a day. And the asses were good asses. They all had their names; Lucy, Cherry, Sammy, Tom, Jack, Ned; each animal pricked up its long ears and turned round its quiet eyes when called. Some were young and some old, but all were very sure-footed, which was needed indeed. "The weight some of 'em would carry was wonderful."

The old

man seemed proud of the

creatures, and kind to them

too in a sort of way. He had been

a fisherman, he said, but now was too old for that; so got his living by collecting sand.

"It makes capital garden-paths, this sand. I'd be glad to bring you some, ladies," said he, evidently with an eye to business. When we explained that this was impracticable, unless he would come all the way to London, he merely said, "Oh," and accepted the disappointment. Then bidding us a civil "Good-day," he disappeared with his laden. train.

the lonely moor." Whenever we think of Bossinney Cove, we shall certainly think of that mild old man and his eleven donkeys.

The day was hot, and it had been a steep climb; we decided to drive in the afternoon, "for a rest," to Boscastle.

Artists and tourists haunt this picturesque nook. A village built at the end of a deep narrow creek, which runs far inland, and is a safe shelter for vessels of considerable size. On either side is a high footpath, leading to two headlands, from both of which the views of sea and coast are very fine. And there are relics of antiquity and legends thereto belonging a green mound, all that remains of Bottrieux Castle; and Ferrabury Church, with its silent tower. A peal of bells had been brought, and the ship which carried them had nearly reached the cove, when the pilot, bidding the captain "thank God for his safe voyage," was answered that he "thanked only himself and a fair wind." Immediately a storm arose; and the ship went down with every soul on board-except the pilot. So the church tower is mute-but on winter nights the lost bells are still heard, sounding mornfully from the depths of the sea.

As we sat, watching with a vague fascination the spouting, minute by minute, of a "blow-hole," almost as fine as the Kynance post-office- -we moralised on the story of the bells, and on the strange notions people have, even in these days, of Divine punishments; imputing to the Almighty Father all their own narrow jealousies and petty revenges, dragging down God into the likeness of men, such an one as themselves, instead of striving to lift man into the image of God.

Meantime the young folks rambled and scrambled-watched with anxious and even envious eyes-for it takes one years to get entirely reconciled to the quiescence of the down-hill journey. And then we drove slowly back-just in time for another grand sunset, with Tintagel black in the forground, until it and all else melted into darkness, and there was nothing left but to

He and his knights-the "shadowy people of the realm of dream," were all about us, as, guided by a rheumatic old woman, who climbed feebly up the stair, where generations of ghostly feet must have ascended and descended, we reached a bastion and gateway, quite pre-historic. Other ruins apparently belong to the eleventh or twelfth centuries. But to this there is no clue. It may have been the very landing-place of King Uther or King Mark, or other Cornish heroes, who held this wonderful natural-artificial fortress in the dim days of old romance.

"Here are King Arthur's cups and saucers," said the old woman, pausing in the midst of a long lament over her own ailments, to point out some holes in the slate rock. "And up there you'll find the chapel. It's an easy climb if you mind the pathjust where it passes the spring."

That spring, trickling down from the very top of the rock, and making a verdant space all round it-what a treasure it must have been to the unknown inhabitants who, centuries ago, entrenched themselves here-for offence or defence-against the main-land. Peacefully it flowed on still, with the little ferns growing, and the sheep nibbling beside it. We idle tourists alone occupied that solitary height where those long-past warlike races—one succeeding the other-lived and loved, fought and died.

The chapel-where the high altar and a little burial-ground beside it can still be traced -is clearly much later than Arthur's time. However there are so few data to go upon, and the action of sea-storms destroys so much every year, that even to the learned archæologist, Tintagel is a great mystery, out of which the imaginative mind may evolve almost anything it likes.

We sat a long time on the top of the rockrealising only the one obvious fact that our eyes were gazing on precisely the same scene, seawards and coast-wards, that all these longdead eyes were accustomed to behold. Beaten by winds and waves till the grey of its slate formation is nearly black; worn into holes by the constant action of the tide which widens yearly the space between it and the main-land, and gnaws the rock below into dangerous hollows that in time become seacaves, Tintagel still remains and one marvels that so much of it does still remain-a land-mark of the cloudy time between legend and actual history.

Whether the ruin on the opposite height was once a portion of Tintagel Castle, before the sea divided it, making a promontory into an island-or whether it was the Castle Terra