DESCRIPTION OF SCILLY. 199 



darkened the horizon ; for what could the heart de- 

 sire more ? Here was a little archipelago, such as 

 Greek heroes might have lived in — bold, rugged, pic- 

 turesque, — secure from all the assaults of idle watering- 

 place frequenters, — lovely to the eye, full of promise 

 to the mind — health in every breeze. Ithaca was visi- 

 bly opposite. Homer's cadences were sweetly audible. 

 Here one might write epics finer than the Odyssey, had 

 one but genius packed up in one's carpet-bag ; and if 

 the genius had been forgotten, left behind (by some 

 strange oversight), at any rate there was the micros- 

 cope and scalpel, with which one might follow in the 

 tracks of the " stout Stagyrite," whom the world is now 

 beginning to recognise among the greatest of its na- 

 turalists. Homer or Aristotle ? The modest choice 

 lay there ; and as Montaigne says — " nous allons par 

 la quester une friande gioire a piper le sot monde/^ 

 (The sot monde being you, beloved reader.) 



It is puzzling to determine the number of the Scilly 

 Isles, because, where the largest, St Mary's, is on a 

 scale of no greater magnitude than nine miles in 

 circumference, it becomes a nice point to settle how 

 small a patch of rock is to be reckoned as an island. 

 There are some hundred, or hundred and twenty, 

 distinct islets ; but of inhabited islands only six. The 

 area in statute acres is 3560, and the population in 

 1851 was, according to the census, 2600 in 511 houses 

 — the females predominating in the ratio of 1439 to 

 1162. The average of death is 16 in 1000 ; in other 

 parts of England it is 23 in 1000, showing a decided 



