wrong may not be so good as our own. Here you have a full view of the mouth of the harbour, nearly a mile in width, and Black Rock peering threateningly up in the centre. Pendennis and Raglan were the last two forts that held out for the Stuart. Here, the commander, John Arundel, a brave old soldier of eightyseven, kept the besiegers at bay till he and his men were literally starved out.

Descend the road a short distance and make for the cliffs that border Falmouth Bay. There runs a path protected in places by a hedge or bank, in others passing under what resembles a tunnel, where a platform from some private garden projects to the very edge to secure an uninterrupted view. After about a 'mile it brings you down upon the beach-the bathingplace of Falmouth; and pleasant withal, as the school of young ladies doubtless thought who were plunging and splashing in the sparkling ripples with merry laughter as I passed. Here, too, is Swanpool, a lake lying in a hollow, backed by creaking mining-works, and between it and the sea a low bank of pebbles-an example of what is to be seen on a grand scale at Loo Pool, on the farther side of the Lizard. The cliffs beyond present extraordinary varieties of form and aspect; their base so jagged as to fret even a calm sea, sweeping round to Rosemullion Point, the western horn of the bay. Far beyond stretches Nare Point, and still farther may be seen a group of isolated rocks, the Manacles. Then across pleasant fields, the village of Mawnan Smith lying in a valley to the right, and down to the ferry at Helford, passing the coast-guard station, which forms so pretty an object at the bend. The Helford river, as it is called, is an arm of the sea,

running across the root of the Lizard as far as Gweek, within three miles of the head of Loo Pool, whereby the great promontory becomes a real peninsula. The estuary is nearly a mile wide, and, being low water, there was a broad, slimy shore to be crossed to reach the boat. The ferryman came running out of the public-house as I passed, and from the top of the bank a few yards farther commenced shouting vociferously to two ladies who, burdened with a carpet-bag, were picking their way across the mud. "You'll be up to your necks," he cried, "if you keep on that way." They waited; and followed on a new track. One of the two was enormously stout-a very mountain of flesh! That she could walk at all seemed a miracle. I observed that our guide led us across the spots most covered with the thin grass-like weeds, and even here we made deep, squashy footprints. Meanwhile "the boy" had brought the boat across; but so shallow was the stream that the plank had to be used for embarkation. It taxed our strength and ingenuity a little to get the stout lady on board; and when we at last succeeded, there was another dilemma. Her weight sent the stern down so deeply into the mud, that pushing off was out of the question; the man and boy tried and tried again, all to no purpose, and there we sat looking at one another: I hope sufficiently resigned. Luckily the tide was just coming in, and lifted us off after a penance of fifteen minutes; the heavy lady hoping the worst was over. "You should come either at new or full moon," rejoined the ferryman; "it's high water then in the middle o' the day." Thanks to a few lumps of rock on the opposite side our landing was less difficult.

Here is Helford; a few houses at the head of a small creek, in which a sloop and half a dozen boats lay imbedded in the mud; but so luxuriant and sequestered, so shut in by trees, as to present a singular combination of the sylvan with industry. Again you notice a change of scenery; every passage of a stream being an introduction to something different. The trees are small, and though the neighbourhood be green, it has an air of wildness.

A rough path skirts the margin of the creek, turns between the houses, and leads inland through a delightfully sheltered alley in the wood. A charming spot is that little valley, almost a glen; a stream leaping along the middle, and here and there a lone cottage, halfhidden by summer leaves. You emerge on a field-path, which, if followed, regardless of intervening roads, brings you presently to Monaccan, another of the small villages hereabouts so numerous. Having a good walk yet before me, I stopped at the public-house to eat a crust, and was agreeably surprised to find a capital glass of ale. An old man who sat poking sticks into the fire took pleasure in telling me he was "fourscore and six;" had neither taken physic nor had a day's illness for sixty years. A remarkable instance, as I told him, of cause and effect.

On through the lanes to St. Keverne, the churchspire of which is seen from far. Mostly up hill; the higher you go the scantier becomes the wood, and the oaks leaning nearly at a right angle across the road, every twig and branch shrinking away, as it were, under shelter of the others, tell of long-continued and unwholesome blasts. Those who advocate the extirpation of all hedgerows would do well to journey down

into Cornwall and witness with their own eyes the effect of an unbroken sweep of the wind. Whether the gales blow across the land or the water, there must be shelter if vegetation is to flourish, be it in field, garden, or coppice. England would not be the fertile agricultural country she is without her hedgerows.

The houses at St. Keverne have a curious appearance, being most of them built of unhewn stone, and the joints, stopped with pale mortar or china-clay, exhibit a grotesque confusion of lines. The walls of the upper storey are faced with slate, curving outward a few inches where they meet the basement, probably to throw off the ever-abundant drip. Scarcely is the village left behind than you are upon the downs; in full presence of the characteristics by which the Lizard is distinguished and most remembered. A scene wild, coarse, and dreary. Patches of gorse here and there, and lumps and masses of stone everywhere. Now, there is nothing to check the wind sweeping in from the broad Atlantic, and it sings through the gorse as if trying to reproduce on land the roaring of the sea. Yet is there much to interest. Ere long a plant catches your eye, and hastening to pluck it, with an exclamation of surprise and pleasure you find it to be the white heath, Erica vagans, one of the most graceful of that singularly beautiful class of plants, and peculiar to Cornwall. It is, moreover, remarkable in growing only on the serpentine; and if you wish to know where this rock meets its neighbour strata, you have only to follow the ins and outs of the white heath. It never misleads: and on the western as on the eastern side of the peninsula will you be able to trace it. Serpentine prevails towards the south. Those scattered lumps of gray

stone are syenite; the dark green masses are the crystallized serpentine, distinguished by geologists as diallage. Though so favourable to the white heath, serpentine is not kind to vegetation generally, the surface above it being cold and infertile; in singular contrast to the marl, or decomposed hornblende, on which the production is almost fabulous-from eighty to ninety-six bushels of oats to the acre, and wheat for years in succession without manure. A patch of this land, not far from St. Keverne, is called the Garden of Cornwall, such is its inexhaustible fertility. You will see acres of it on the way to and near the lighthouses. This marl is so much in request, that the soil has been dug from some of the fields to a depth of twenty feet or more, and carted away to improve farms less favourably situate. In many places the half or the whole of a field is left resembling a deep pit, yet with undiminished productiveness; and when walking along the top of a fence you are surprised by seeing that while on one side the height is but about six feet, on the other it is four times as much, where you look down on a teeming crop of grain.

What the interior lacks in attractiveness is made up along the shore by the variety and grandeur of the cliffs; and to these you may strike a direct course with but little risk of trespassing. There is a remarkable cavern at Nare Point, a hundred feet long, of which an ancient beach firmly imbedded forms the roof. And here, east of St. Keverne, you look down on an extraordinary scene-the Lowlands, or Chynals Wollowsa flat of sixty acres, for the most part sand, stretching into the sea, and so low that the waves at times roll over it at high water. It remains, so the learned tell