ce in the moonlight of Carn-breh, the
remains of a British beacon or hill-fort, much of the antiquarian
interest of which has been destroyed by a neighbouring squire
having added to it _modern_ ruins, to make it an object from his
hall! the whole hill, like much of the country, is sprinkled with
granite blocks higgledi-piggledy, and it is a grand dispute among
the pundits, whether or not the Archdruid Nature has been playing
at marbles in these parts; I wished to satisfy myself about it, but
couldn't stop, and so there's no use in grummering about regrets.
I've seen enough, to be able to judge _a priori_, that father
Noah's flood piled the hill with blocks, which have served one Dr.
Borlase and others as occasions for earning the character of
blockheads. One thing is man's doing, without _much_ dispute, and
that is, an obelisk in honour of old Lord De Dunstanville, which is
a conspicuous toothpick on the hilltop: no doubt, as in this case,
nature brought the stones there, and man did his part in arranging
them; poor Dr. B. would have you believe that every natural rock
had been lifted here bodily for architectural purposes, and as
bodily made a most elaborate and labyrinthine ruin afterwards. At
Penzance, a broiled fish supper, and to bed by midnight, having
ordered a twilight gig, wherein by 7 on the ninth I was traversing
the beautiful bay. Penzance is a fine town in a splendid situation;
the bay, bounded by the Lizard and its opposite bold
brother-headland, inclosing St. Michael's Mount, and having a
fertile and villa-studded background; the town full of good
handsome shops (one like the Egyptian Hall), a large cathedralish
church, and with a very special market-place, of light granite, in
the form of a plain Grecian temple, surmounted at the middle by an
imposing dome. As I had duly culled information from the natives, I
lost no time in breakfasting, but drove off, bun in hand, to
explore the country of the Druids. Now, if the matters I succeeded
in visiting were in isolated and plain situations, they might have
been less disappointing; but where the face of the whole soil is
covered naturally with jutting rocks, and timeworn boulders of
granite, one doesn't feel much astonishment to see some one stone
set on end a little more obviously than the