rrent of life in one untroubled
and unvaried stream, and who have no perception or idea of the deeper
(if I may so express it) feelings of our nature, to call all this
romance; but those who have tasted bitterly of the ills of this world,
and who look back upon times past as doth the traveller in the desert on
viewing from afar the oasis he has left--upon their transitory existence
as a troubled dream--these can feel how deeply solitude amidst the
sublimities of Nature will heal the troubled mind. Is there not a
responsive chord in the hearts of such of my readers? Early one morning,
soon after my arrival at Landwithiel, I proceeded over land to a distant
part of the parish, to visit a ruin situated in a wild and remote spot,
which possessed some degree of historical interest. In the evening I
decided on returning by the coast in order to vary my route. The day
had been clear and sultry, and though the wind blew fresh from the
southward, yet its refreshing influence seemed exhausted by the intense
heat of the sun. In my progress along shore, though it was getting late,
and I was somewhat fatigued, I could not resist the opportunity of
exploring a sort of natural opening or cove in a part of the coast where
the cliffs were unusually precipitous; affording the geologist the
highest gratification; you were reminded indeed of the flat surface of a
stone wall in many parts, which effect the regular stratification of the
rocks contributed to produce; and it required no great stretch of fancy
to imagine it one vast fortification, with loop-holes at regular
intervals--at a short distance from seaward certainly it would be
difficult to divest a stranger of the idea that it was something
artificial. Two high points of rock contracting at their extremities in
a circular direction so as almost to meet, ran into the sandy beach, and
you found on advancing beyond the narrow entrance, a considerable space,
which gradually extended to something like an oblong square, with a
sandy bottom everywhere, surrounded by the same lofty cliffs which
composed the adjacent coast. I was much surprised that I had never heard
of this place before; it had apparently been more the effect of some
natural convulsion than of the encroachment of the sea, and at the
further end was a high mass of shingles, seaweed, and fragments of rock
packed closely together by the tide. On examination I discovered, about
the centre of the shingles, a large stone cross, car