HISTORY AND THE PARISH 165 



brier arch this way and that their green and rosy and 

 purple stems, bright leaves, flowers pink and white. Only 

 the shin-breaking Cornish stiles of stone, interrupting the 

 hedge and giving a view of barren hills or craggy-sided 

 sea, destroy the illusion created by this exuberance of herb 

 and bush and the perfume of woodbine and rose. 



Nowhere is the stateliness or grace or privacy of trees 

 more conspicuous than about the Cornish towns and 

 farms. The tall round-topped elms above Padstow, for 

 example, would be natural and acceptable unconsciously 

 elsewhere; but above those crossing lines of roof they 

 have an indescribable benevolence. The farmhouses are 

 usually square, dry and grey, being built of slate with 

 grey-slated roofs painted by lichen; some are white- 

 washed; in some, indeed, the stones are of many greys and 

 blues, with yellowish and reddish tinges, hard, but warm 

 in the sun and comforting to look at when close to the 

 sea and some ruinous promontory; few are screened by 

 ivy or climbing rose. The farm buildings are of the same 

 kind, relieved by yellow straw, the many hues of hay, 

 the purple bracken stacks, the dark peat. The gates are 

 coarse and mean, of iron or of cheap or rough wood, 

 lightly made, patched, held together by string, and owing 

 their only charm to the chance use of the curved ribs 

 of ships as gate-posts. But to many of the buildings 

 sycamore and ash and apple trees bent above tall grass 

 lend their beauty of line, of mass, of colour, of shade, 

 of sound and of many motions. I can never forget the 

 rows of ash trees, the breezy sycamores and the tamarisks 

 by ancient Harlyn, with its barrows on the hill, its ruins 

 of chapel and church among rushes and poppies, its little 

 oak wood by the sandy river mouth where the men of 



