CORNISH CHARACTERISTICS. 



217 



Cornwall, a county where, it must be remembered, a stranger is doubly a stranger, in relation 

 to provincial sympathies ; where the national sympathy is almost entirely merged in the local 

 feeling ; where a man speaks of himself as Cornish in much the same spirit as a "Welshman 

 speaks of himself as Welsh. 



" In like manner, another instance drawn from my own experience will best display and 

 describe the anxiety which we found generally testified by the Cornish poor to make the best 

 and most grateful return in their power for anything which they considered as a favour kindly 

 bestowed. Such anecdotes as I here relate in illustration of popular character cannot, I think, 

 be considered trifling; for it is by trifles, after all, that we gain our truest appreciation of the 

 marking signs of good or evil in the dispositions of our fellow-beings, just as in the beating of 



VIEW ON THE COHXISH COAST. 



a single artery under the touch we discover an indication of the strength or weakness of the 

 whole vital frame. 



" On the granite cliffs at the Land's End I met with an old man, seventy-two years of age, 

 of whom I asked some questions relative to the extraordinary rocks scattered about this part of 

 the coast. He immediately opened his whole budget of local anecdotes, telling them in a high 

 quavering treble voice, which was barely audible above the dash of the breakers beneath, and 

 the fierce whistling of the wind among the rocks around us. However, the old fellow went on 

 talking incessantly, hobbling along before me, up and down steep paths, and along the very 

 brink of a fearful precipice, with as much coolness as if his sight was as clear and his step as 

 firm as in his youth. When he had shown me all that he could show, and had thoroughly 

 exhausted himself with talking, I gave him a shilling at parting. He appeared to be perfectly 

 astonished by a remuneration which the reader will doubtless consider the reverse of excessive, 

 thanked me at the top of his voice, and then led me in a great hurry, and with many 

 mysterious nods and gestures, to a hollow in the grass, where he had spread on a clean 

 148 



