65 



or Roman arts, either hi town, castle, port, temple, or 

 sculpture. 



Vve are not to think however but Scilly was inhabited, 

 and was frequently resorted to anciei.tlv, as the old 

 historians relate. All the islands (several of which are 

 Upw without inhabitants) by the remains of walls, 

 foundations of 'many contiguous houses, ai.d a great 

 number of sepulchral burrows, shew that they have; 

 been fully cultivated and inhabited. 



That they were inhabited by Britons, is past all 

 doubt, not only from their neighbourhood to England, 

 but from the Druid monuments. Several rude stone 

 pillars, circles of stone erect, rock-bason s, ail monu- 

 ments common in Cornwall and Wales, are equal evi- 

 dences of the antiquity, religion, and original of the old 

 inhabitants. 



How came these ancient inhabitants then (it may be 

 asked) to vanish, so as that the present have no pre- 

 tensions of any affinity of any kind with them, either in 

 blood, language, or customs I How came they to dis- 

 appear, and leave so few traces of plenty, or ails, and 

 no- posterity behind them '] From two causes, the 

 manifest encroachments of the sea, and as manifest a 

 subsidence of some parts of the land. 



The sea is the insatiable monster which devours 

 islands, gorges itself with the earth, sand, clay, and all 

 the yielding parts, and leaves nothing where it can 

 reach, but the skeleton, the bared rock. The continual 

 advances which the sea makes upon the low lands, are 

 plain to all people of observation. What we see hap- 

 pening every day may assure us of what has happened 

 in former times; and from the 'banks of sand -and earth 

 giving way to the sea, and the breaches becoming still 

 more open, and irrecoverable : it appears that repeated 

 tempests have occasioned a gradual dissolution of the 

 solids for many ages. 



Again, the flats which stretch from one island to the 

 other, are plain evidences of a former union between 

 many now distinct islands. The flats between some of 

 them are quite dry -at a spring-tide, .and men easily pass 



