of stones, at any
wall, or pillar, or gate-post, without asking one's self the question, Is
this old, or is this new? Is it the work of Saxon, or of Roman, or of
Celt? Nay, one feels sometimes tempted to ask, Is this the work of Nature
or of man?

"Among these rocks and stones, methinks I see
More than the heedless impress that belongs
To lonely Nature's casual work: they bear
A semblance strange of power intelligent,
And of design not wholly worn away."--_Excursion_.

The late King of Prussia's remark about Oxford, that in it everything old
seemed new, and everything new seemed old, applies with even greater truth
to Cornwall. There is a continuity between the present and the past of
that curious peninsula, such as we seldom find in any other place. A
spring bubbling up in a natural granite basin, now a meeting-place for
Baptists or Methodists, was but a few centuries ago a holy well, attended
by busy friars, and visited by pilgrims, who came there "nearly lame," and
left the shrine "almost able to walk." Still further back the same spring
was a centre of attraction for the Celtic inhabitants, and the rocks piled
up around it stand there as witnesses of a civilization and architecture
certainly more primitive than the civilization and architecture of Roman,
Saxon, or Norman settlers. We need not look beyond. How long that granite
buttress of England has stood there, defying the fury of the Atlantic, the
geologist alone, who is not awed by ages, would dare to tell us. But the
historian is satisfied with antiquities of a more humble and homely
character; and in bespeaking the interest, and, it may be, the active
support of our readers, in favor of the few relics of the most ancient
civilization of Britain, we promise to keep within strictly historical
limits, if by historical we understand, with the late Sir G. C. Lewis,
that only which can be authenticated by contemporaneous monuments.

But even thus, how wide a gulf seems to separate us from the first
civilizers of the West of England, from the people who gave names to every
headland, bay, and hill of Cornwall, and who first planned those lanes
that now, like throbbing veins, run in every direction across that
heath-covered peninsula! No doubt it is well known that the original
inhabitants of Cornwall were Celts, and that Cornish is a Celtic language;
and that, if we divide the Celtic languages into two classes, Welsh with
Cornish and Breton forms one class, the _Cy