90 TUB CHRISTIAN NATURALISE. 



Plymouth, the first navel arsenal in the world, with its 

 unrivalled harbour of Hamoaze. Towards the South, 

 the view is only bounded by the blue vsaters of the 

 English Channel, and in the opposite direction, the bluff 

 headlands of the Northern coast, and the isle of Lundy 

 may be faintly descried in clear weather, though the 

 distance of the latter cannot be less than forty miles. 

 But when from the East the spectator turns to the 

 West, the change is at once singular and impressive. 

 Nothing is to be seen but a wide waste of dreary 

 moors, peat bogs, and bleak hills. Scarcely a vestige 

 of cultivation : scarcely a trace of man or his works, 

 relieves the stern and solitary aspect of nature in this 

 her wild and awful retreat. But for the herds of cat- 

 tle which pick up a Summer's subsistence over an ex- 

 tensive range of course herbage, and a human form 

 occasionally emerging from the turf-pits which are la 

 supply a winter's fuel, all signs of vitality would here 

 appear to be extinct. With very few exceptions, the 

 whole region may be regarded as in the same state it 

 was at the time of the Roman conquest, and affords, 

 perhaps, an exact specimen of what a large portion of 

 ouf island would have been to this day, without the 

 blessings of eivilizationr 



