60 THE LAND'S END 



remained longest unchanged, and retained much of 

 its distinctive character down to within recent times. 

 It was a Celtic people with an Iberian strain, even as 

 in Wales and Ireland and Scotland. Now, either 

 because of a different proportion of the dark aborigi- 

 nal blood, or of the infusion of Scandinavian and 

 other racial elements, or some other cause, these four 

 Celtic families differ very widely, as we know ; but 

 we think, or at all events are accustomed to say, that 

 they are an imaginative, a poetic people. Doubtless 

 in Cornwall this spirit was always weakest, since it 

 never succeeded in expressing itself in any permanent 

 form ; but albeit feeble it probably did exist, and in 

 this very district, this end of all the land, it must 

 have lingered longest. If this be so it is strange 

 to think that it was perhaps finally extinguished by 

 the Wesley brothers one with the poetry of the 

 Hebrews ever on his lips, the other with his own 

 lyrical gift ! 



It may be said that in the middle of the eighteenth 

 century the light must have been so feeble that it 

 would have soon expired of itself if Methodism had 

 not trampled out the last faint sparks ; and it may 

 also be said that the Cornish people did not lose 

 much, seeing that this root had never flowered ; that 

 they had never sung and never said anything worth 

 remembering ; while on the other hand their gain 

 was a substantial one, for though it imposed an ugly 

 form of religion and ugly houses of worship, it 

 changed them (so the Methodists say) from brutality 

 and vice to what they are a temperate, law-abiding 



