time of Oliver's usurpation, when
all monumental things became despicable, one Shrubsall, one of
Oliver's heroes, then Governor of Pendennis, by labor and much
ado, caused to be undermined and thrown down, to the great grief
of the country; but to his own great glory, as he thought, doing
it, as he said, with a small cane in his hand. I myself have heard
him to boast of this act, being a prisoner then under him."

Mr. Scawen, however, does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing
down the Mincamber, _i.e._ the Menamber, acted very like the old
missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was
believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no
king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of
this loyal stone may have seemed a matter of wise policy.

Even the foolish exploit of Lieutenant Goldsmith, in 1824, would seem to
have had some kind of excuse. Dr. Borlase had asserted "that it was
_morally_ impossible that any lever, or indeed force, however applied in a
mechanical way, could remove the famous Logan rock at Trereen Dinas from
its present position." Ptolemy, the son of Hephaestion, had made a similar
remark about the Gigoman rock,(58) stating that it might be stirred with
the stalk of an asphodel, but could not be removed by any force.
Lieutenant Goldsmith, living in an age of experimental philosophy,
undertook the experiment, in order to show that it was _physically_
possible to overthrow the Logan; and he did it. He was, however, very
properly punished for this unscientific experiment, and he had to replace
the stone at his own expense.

As this matter is really serious, we have drawn up a short list of acts of
Vandalism committed in Cornwall within the memory of living man. That list
could easily be increased, but even as it is, we hope it may rouse the
attention of the public:--

Between St. Ives and Zennor, on the lower road over Tregarthen Downs,
stood a Logan rock. An old man, perhaps ninety years of age, told Mr.
Hunt, who mentions this and other cases in the preface to his charming
collection of Cornish tales and legends, that he had often logged it, and
that it would make a noise which could _be heard for miles_.

At Balnoon, between Nancledrea and Knill's Steeple, some miners came upon
"two slabs of granite cemented together," which covered a walled grave
three feet square, an ancient kist-vaen. In it they