194 THE LAND'S END 



events, this fountain of inspiration has never ceased to 

 flow. It is flowing copiously as ever now, and mak- 

 ing us richer every day. What is the secret of this 

 great difference the reason of this creative faculty 

 which has given Ireland, in spite of her misery, so 

 splendid a place in our literature, which appears like a 

 touch of rainbow colour in the humblest peasant's mind, 

 and does not exist and never has been in Cornwall ? 

 Doubtless from that mixture of blood which came to 

 pass in Ireland during those restless centuries of tre- 

 mendous changes, when ancient nations were cast into 

 another mould, of emigration and conquest and 

 colonisation ; and of the fusion of races by inter- 

 marriage of the Irish Celts with the mentally more 

 virile and imaginative invaders from the north. We 

 must assume, too, that this fusion of blood did not 

 go so far and hardly took place at all in Cornwall. 

 We see that the conquerors left but few and slight 

 traces of their occupancy in the peninsula, and the 

 presumption is that they did not take root in it, that 

 when they had come and conquered and had their 

 carousal of blood they were glad to sail or march 

 away, like William Gilpin in search of the picturesque, 

 from a country of so barren and repellent an aspect, to 

 seek for a permanent resting-place in a softer, more 

 fertile land. Lord Courtney, in a presidential 

 address to the Natural History and Antiquarian 

 Society of Penzance, said : " While the wave of 

 conquest swept completely over other parts of Eng- 

 land, it only just reached this part and then receded. 

 The population of Cornwall in general has remained 



