iences,
dancing, fencing, and fiddling.' He criticises them severely: 'They
drink, sing and dance,' and, with a fine allusion to emphasise his
point, declares: 'But the Americans have not that careless volatility,
like the cockle in the fable, to sing and dance when the house is on
fire over them.' The French were released after the abdication of
Napoleon; a year later, peace was signed between England and America,
and then, till 1850, the buildings were unoccupied. In that year the
decision was made that they should be used as a convict prison, and as a
result, one must agree with Sir Frederick Pollock, it 'is the ugliest
thing physically and morally on the moor.'

It is pleasanter to turn back to the moor itself--to topics less out of
character with it. Foremost appear stories of magic, black and white,
ancient beliefs and legends without end. Mr King, whose knowledge of the
country was at once vast and minute, is quoted as having said 'that he
believed almost every form of superstition or superstitious observances
condemned in the Penitential of Bartholomew, Bishop of Exeter,
1161-1184, might be found sheltering itself under the Dartmoor Tors.'
(This remark must have been made about the middle of the nineteenth
century.) 'The same wild creed has been handed down from generation to
generation; the same spots on the lonely moor, and the same gloomy pools
in the river, that were shunned by his forefathers, are avoided as
"critical" (to use his own word) by the Devonshire peasant now ... and
whoever may find himself in the heart of its lonely wastes when daylight
is closing, and the air seems to fill with

'"Undescribed sounds
That come a-swooning over hollow ground,
And wither drearily on barren moors,"

will scarcely wonder that the spirits of the elder world should not yet
have been effectually dislodged from their ancient solitudes.... The
Pixies, thoroughly mischievous elves, who delight to lead all wanderers
astray, dwell in the clefts of broken granite, and dance on the green
sward by the side of the hill streams; ... sometimes, but very rarely,
they are seen dancing by the streams dressed in green, the true livery
of the small people. They ride horses at night, and tangle their manes
into inextricable knots. They may be heard pounding their cider and
threshing their wheat far within the recesses of their "house" on
Sheepstor--a cavern formed by overhanging blocks of granite.