sh
Wonder' spread far and wide, and orders came pouring in upon him,
insomuch that he became a rich man and a Royal Academician, and
ultimately President of the Academy. He married an authoress, and his
remains were deposited in St. Paul's Cathedral, near to those of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. I have heard my grandfather say that he met him once
in the town of Helston, and he described him as somewhat rough and
unpolished, but a sterling, kind-hearted man."

"Did he paint landscape at all?" inquired Oliver.

"Not much, I believe. He devoted himself chiefly to portraits."

"Well, now," said Oliver, looking round him; "it strikes me that this is
just the country for a landscape painter. There is nowhere else such
fine cliff scenery, and the wild moors, which remind me much of
Scotland, are worthy of being sketched by an able brush."

"People have curiously different opinions in reference to the moors
which you admire so much," said Tregarthen. "A clergyman who lived and
wrote not very long ago, came to Cornwall in search of the picturesque,
and he was so disappointed with what he termed a barren, desolate
region, that he stopped suddenly on the road between Launceston and
Bodmin, and turned his back on Cornwall for ever. As might be expected,
such a man gave a very false idea of the country. On the other hand, a
more recent writer, commenting on the first, speaks of his delight--
after having grown somewhat tired of the almost too rich and
over-cultivated scenery of Kent--on coming to what he styled `a sombre
apparition of the desert in a corner of green England,' and dwells with
enthusiasm on `these solitudes, and hills crowned with rugged rocks,
classical heaths and savage ravines, possessing a character of desolate
grandeur.' But this writer did more. He travelled through the country,
and discovered that it possessed other and not less beautiful features;
that there were richly clothed vales and beautiful rivulets, cultivated
fields and prolific gardens, in close proximity to our grand cliffs and
moors."

"He might have added," said Oliver, "that plants and flowers flourish in
the open air here, and attain to a size, and luxuriance which are rare
in other parts of England. Why, I have seen myrtles, laurels, fuchsias,
pomegranates, and hortensias forming hedges and growing on the windows
and walls of many houses. To my mind Cornwall is one of the finest
counties in England--of which Flora herself has reason to