MANNERS AND MORALS 139 



A common charge against the Cornish is a want of 

 solidity or stability of character. You cannot rely on 

 them. You are constantly deceived by their manner : 

 they are the readiest of any people on earth to fall 

 in with your views and do exactly what you want. 

 But they don't do it. You may waste years or indeed 

 your whole life in striving to make them see things in 

 your better way, and give them every instruction and 

 make them understand (for they are not stupid) how 

 much more may be done by following an improved 

 method, and you will always be brought back to the 

 same old We dont belong to do it that way, and after a 

 hundred or a thousand trials you give it up in despair. 

 Or you may take your defeat philosophically (with a 

 little added wormwood) and say that although they 

 are not stupid, their intelligence, like that of the 

 lower animals, is non-progressive. 



Then as to the one-and-all spirit. This, I am 

 assured on all hands, is the veriest fiction, or at all 

 events it is quite a different thing from what it is 

 usually supposed to be. The members of each little 

 community are as a fact more unfriendly and spiteful 

 towards one another than is the case in an English 

 village : they are one only when they make a com- 

 bined attack on some person who has been so unfor- 

 tunate as to offend everybody at the same time. So 

 envious are they that every one hates to see any bene- 

 fit or gift bestowed on another. You must treat all 

 alike ; you may not give a hundred of coals to the 

 poorest, most suffering old woman without exciting 

 general ill-will, unless you are prepared to give as 



