308 THE LAND'S END 



ance and expression at that spot his grey weary 

 face, his dejected attitude, his immobility ; his and 

 that of the five or six others those grey old men 

 who, by a strange chance, had all come to the place 

 one day at the same hour, and had been left to their 

 own melancholy thoughts by their younger, more 

 active companions. It was mere chance, but the 

 sight profoundly impressed me and gave me a more 

 vivid idea than I had hitherto had of the fascination 

 this last rocky headland has for our minds. 



Then, when the strange spectacle of those aged 

 men on that bleak day, seated, each on his rock, 

 twenty or thirty yards apart, absorbed in his own 

 mournful thoughts and gazing out fixedly on the 

 troubled sea, was still fresh, other incidents came to 

 keep the subject uppermost in my mind and to com- 

 pel me to return to it and to make in conclusion 

 a practical suggestion. 



One of the " incidents " mentioned was the perusal 

 of a book on Cornwall which I picked up in Penzance 

 for the sake of the excellent illustrations rather than 

 to read it. I had already read or glanced through 

 forty or fifty or, it may be, a hundred books on Corn- 

 wall with little pleasure or profit and did not want to 

 read any more. It was An Unsentimental Journey 

 through Cornwall^ by the author of John Halifax, 

 Gentleman, a lady who could not be unsentimental if 

 she tried ever so hard. 



The book is dated 1884, but a few years before 

 the author's death, when she was a feeble old lady 

 whose long life-work of producing novels was over, 



