MANNERS AND MORALS 137 



facts originally collected very long ago and carried on 

 from book to book facts about the pilchard fishery, 

 tin and tin - mining, geology and natural history, 

 Cornish crosses and cromlechs with other antiquities ; 

 also legends of saints and giants and the happenings 

 of a thousand years ago. But about the reasonable, 

 to wit the inhabitants, next to nothing, and that very 

 little as a rule misleading. It is mostly of a flattering 

 description. 



It is indeed curious to note that while those who 

 have written on the Cornish people almost invariably 

 say the pleasantest things about them, the English, or 

 Anglo-Saxons, who live among them, the strangers 

 who reside permanently or for long periods within 

 their gates, have a very different opinion. The 

 praise and the dispraise to my mind are equally far 

 from the truth ; moreover, it is not difficult to dis- 

 cover the reason of such widely divergent opinions. 

 Those who visit the land to write a book about it, or 

 for some other purpose, but do not remain long 

 enough to know anything properly, are charmed and 

 misled by the exceedingly friendly and pleasant de- 

 meanour towards strangers which is almost universal, 

 seeing in it only the outward expression of divers 

 delightful qualities. Those who live with the people, 

 if they happen to be Saxons, discover that the friend- 

 liness is a manner, that when you penetrate beneath it 

 you come upon a character wholly un-Saxon, there- 

 fore of a wrong description or an inferior quality. 

 For it is a fact that the Englishman is endowed with 

 a very great idea of himself, of the absolute Tightness 



