202 THE LAND'S END 



naked granite boxes set up in every hamlet and at 

 roadsides, hideous to look at and a blot and disfigure- 

 ment to the village and to God's earth, are assuredly 

 an insult to every person endowed with a sense of 

 beauty and fitness. You will notice that a cow-house 

 or a barn or any other outbuilding at even the most 

 squalid-looking little farm in a Cornish hamlet strikes 

 one as actually beautiful by contrast with the neigh- 

 bouring conventicle. And in a way it is so, being 

 suited to its purpose and in its lines in harmony with 

 the surrounding buildings, with the entire village 

 grouped or scattered round the old church with its 

 dignified old stone tower, and finally with the rocky 

 land in which it is placed. From such a building 

 barn or cow-house one turns to the chapel with a 

 feeling of amazement, and asks for the thousandth 

 time, How can men find it in them to do such things ? 



The interior of these chapels is on a par with their 

 exterior appearance. A square naked room, its four 

 dusty walls distempered a crude blue or red or yellow, 

 with a loud-ticking wooden kitchen clock nailed high 

 up on one of them to tell how the time goes. Of the 

 service I can only say that after a good deal of ex- 

 perience of chapel services in many parts of England 

 I have found nothing so unutterably repellent as the 

 services here, often enough conducted by a " local 

 preacher," an illiterate native who holds forth for an 

 hour on the Lord's dealings with the Israelites in a 

 loud metallic harsh Cornish voice. 



I observed that as a rule but few adults attended 

 the morning services in the villages and small towns ; 



