136 THE LAND'S END 



sensible ; but now, after having written one entire 

 long chapter on the soberness of the Cornish people, 

 explaining the causes, as I conceive them, of this 

 peculiar state, I think it may be just as well to go on 

 about the reasonable, to wit the inhabitants, and 

 endeavour to get a little nearer to a proper under- 

 standing of them. And here I must modify what I 

 said in my haste about the worthlessness (to me) 

 of all books on Cornwall, protesting that my time 

 would have been better spent in listening to the chir- 

 ruping of a cock sparrow than in reading them. 

 Carew's book is a notable exception, pleasant and 

 profitable to read after three centuries, and, if we 

 exclude living authors, it may be described as the one 

 very good book ever written by a Cornishman. 



Having said so much it strikes me as an odd fact 

 that the boast Carew made about his important and 

 long-living book that it was his very own, or, to use 

 his more picturesque expression, that he gathered the 

 sticks for the building of his poor nest I, too, can 

 make of this unimportant work which may not have 

 more years of life than the Survey has had centuries. 



For impressions of nature one goes to nature the 

 visible world which lies open before us ; but when it 

 comes to that other nature of the human heart, half- 

 hidden in clouds and mist and half-revealed in gleams 

 of the sun, one modestly looks to others for guidance 

 and to the books which have been written in the 

 past. And of books there are plenty histories, 

 topographies, guides, hand-books, tours, travels, itin- 

 eraries, journeys and journals, wherein are many useful 



