them highly distinguished) discussed the question,
'How to develop Cornwall as a holiday resort.' 'How to bedevil it' was, I
fear, our name in the editorial office for this correspondence. More and
more as the debate went on I found myself out of sympathy with it, and
more and more in sympathy with a lady who raised an indignant protest--

"Unless Cornishmen look to it, their country will be spoilt before
they know it. Already there are signs of it--pitiable signs;
Not many months ago I visited Tintagel, which is justly one of the
prides of the Duchy. The 'swinging seas' are breaking against the
great cliffs as they broke there centuries ago when Arthur and
Launcelot and the Knights of the Round Table peopled the place.
The castle is mostly crumbled away now, but some fraction of its old
strength still stands to face the Atlantic gales, and to show us how
walls were built in the grand old days. In the valley the grass is
green and the gorse is yellow, and overhead the skies are blue and
delightful: but facing Arthur's Castle--grinning down, as it were,
in derision--there is being erected a modern hotel--'built in
imitation of Arthur's Castle,' as one is told! . . . There is not yet
a rubbish shoot over the edge of the cliff, but I do not think I am
wrong in stating that the drainage is brought down into that cove
where long ago (the story runs) the naked baby Arthur came ashore on
the great wave!"

In summing up the discussion I confess with shame that I temporised.
It was hard to see one's native country impoverished by the evil days in
which mining (and to a lesser degree, agriculture) had fallen; to see
her population diminishing and her able-bodied sons emigrating by the
thousand. It is all very pretty for a visitor to tell us that the charm
of Cornwall is its primaeval calm, that it seems to sleep an enchanted
sleep, and so on; but we who inhabit her wish (and not altogether from
mercenary motives) to see her something better than a museum of a dead
past. I temporised therefore with those who suggested that Cornwall might
yet enrich herself by turning her natural beauty to account: yet even so I
had the sense to add that--

"Jealous as I am for the beauty of our Duchy, and delighted when
strangers admire her, I am, if possible, more jealous for the
character of her sons, and more eager that strangers should re