use enjoy
their verdant shelter alike; the bye-roads leading in and out of the
village, are soon lost to view amid outspread branches; and not even a
peep of the land that leads on to the sea in one direction, and back to
the town in the other, is to be obtained through the natural screen of
leaves above, and mosses, ferns, and high grass below, which closely
shut in this part of the Vale of Mawgan from the open country around.

There is an unbroken, unworldly tranquillity about this secluded place,
which communicates itself mysteriously to the stranger's thoughts;
making him unconsciously slacken in his walk, and look and listen in
silence, when he enters it, as if he had penetrated into a new sphere.
Slight noises, rarely noticed elsewhere, are always audible here. The
dull fall of the latch, when an idle child carelessly opens the
churchyard wicket, sounds from one end of the village to the other. The
curious traveller who wanders round the walls of the old church, peering
through its dusty lattice windows at the dark religious solitude within,
can hear the lightest flap of a duck's wing in the stream below; or the
gentlest rustle of distant leaves, as the faint breeze moves them in the
upland woods above. But these, and all other sounds, never break the
peaceful charm of the place--they only deepen its unearthly stillness.

Within the church-yard, the bright colour of the turf, and the quiet
grey hues of the mouldering tombstones, are picturesquely intermingled
all over the uneven surface of the ground, save in one remote corner,
where the graves are few and the grass grows rank and high. Here, the
eye is abruptly attracted by the stern of a boat, painted white, and
fixed upright in the earth. This strange memorial, little suited though
it be to the old monuments around, has a significance of its own which
gives it a peculiar claim to consideration. Inscribed on it, appear the
names of ten fishermen of the parish who went out to sea to pursue their
calling, on one wintry night in 1846. It was unusually cold on land--on
the sea, the frosty bitter wind cut through to the bones. The men were
badly provided against the weather; and hardy as they were, the weather
killed them that night. In the morning, the boat drifted on shore,
manned like a spectre bark, by the ghastly figures of the
dead--freighted horribly with the corpses of ten men all frozen to
death. They are now buried in Mawgan church-yard; and the stern of th