the reader consider and determine.

For our parts, let us honestly confess that though we took up the old
play (not unnaturally) to laugh over the clumsiness and eccentricity of
the performance, we now lay it down (not inconsistently), recognising
the artless sincerity and elevation of the design--just as in the
earliest productions of the Italian School of Painting we first perceive
the false perspective of a scene or the quaint rigidity of a figure, and
only afterwards discover that these crudities and formalities enshrine
the germs of deep poetic feeling, and the first struggling perceptions
of grace, beauty, and truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] In case any of my readers should feel desirous of seeing a specimen
of the Cornish language at the date of the play, I subjoin the original
text of the seven lines of John Keygwyn's translation, quoted above.

"Syr, war nebas lavarow,
Tast gy part an avallow,
Po ow harenga ty a gyll!
Meir, Kymar an avail teake,
Po sure inter te ha'th wreage
An garenga quyt a fyll
Mar ny vynyth y thebbry!"

Some of this looks like a very polyglot language. But the ancient
Cornish tongue had altered and deteriorated; and was indeed changing
into English at the period of our play. Why the author should have
helped himself, in his literary emergency, to the two Latin words in the
fifth line (_inter te_) when English would have served his turn as well,
it is difficult to discover, unless he wished to show his learning
before the rustic audiences of Piran Round.

XII.

THE NUNS OF MAWGAN.

About three miles from the large market-town of St. Columb Major, in the
direction of the coast, is situated the Vale of Mawgan. The village of
the same name occupies the lower part of the valley, and includes a few
cottages, an old church, a yet older manor-house, and a clear running
stream, crossed by a little stone bridge, all nestling close together on
a few hundred yards of ground enclosed by some of the most luxuriant
wood foliage in Cornwall. The trees bound each side of the stream,
tinging it in deep places where it eddies smoothly, with hues of
lustrous green; and dipping their lower branches into it, where it
ripples on white pebbles or glides fast over grey sand. They cluster
thickly about the old church-yard, as if to keep the place secret,
throwing deep shadows over the graves, and hiding all outer objects from
the eye. The small cottage garden and the spacious manor-ho