3H THE LAND'S END 



Is this sentiment, which is not confined to our island 

 country but survives in the transplanted race in other 

 regions of the globe, this feeling which the matter- 

 of-fact Cornishman laughs at and which may make 

 many of us smile when we meet with it in a printed 

 book, but is in us all the same and a part of our life 

 is this sentiment of any value and worth cherishing ? 

 I take it that it is, since if we were stripped of senti- 

 ment, illusions and such traditions, romance and 

 dreams, as we inherit or which gather about and 

 remain with us to the end of our days, we should be 

 beggared indeed. Well, let it be so, it may be said 

 in reply ; 'tis in you and in many of us, and some 

 have it not, and that's all there is to be said about it 

 why then speak of cherishing ? For the following 

 reason in this particular case : the sentiment relates to 

 a locality, a spot of land with peculiar features and 

 character, a rocky headland with the boundless ocean 

 in front and the desolate wind-swept moor behind. 

 These features, an image of which is carried in our 

 minds from childhood, are bound up with and are 

 part and parcel of the feeling, so that to make any 

 change in such a spot, to blow up the headland, for 

 instance, as any one could do with a few shillings' worth 

 of dynamite, or to alter and deface the surface of the 

 adjacent land and build big houses and other ugly 

 structures on it, would be felt by every pilgrim as an 

 indignity, a hateful vandalism. We have seen in the 

 case of Hindhead and of many other places which 

 powerfully attract us, what the greed and philistinism 

 of man will do to destroy an ancient charm. A man 



