PILGRIMS AT THE LAND'S END 315 



may do what he likes with his own a frightful liberty 

 when we remember how God's footstool has been 

 parcelled out among private persons, and what brutish 

 men, or men without the sense of beauty, have done 

 and may do to spoil it. I suppose that if Sir Edmund 

 Antrobus thought proper he could run up a red-brick 

 hotel or sanatorium high as Hankey's Mansions at 

 Stonehenge : but not Stonehenge, nor Mona, nor 

 Senlac, nor that hoary fane where Britain buries her 

 great dead, nor any castle or cathedral, or tower or 

 river or mountain or plain in all the land draws us so 

 powerfully as this naked moor and rude foreland with 

 its ancient dim memories and associations. And we 

 now see what is being done with it how plots of land 

 for building purposes are being sold right and left, 

 and the place in every way vulgarised and degraded. 



Undoubtedly there are men so devoid of senti- 

 ment and imagination that they would not hesitate to 

 stamp out the last beautiful thing on earth, if its 

 beauty, or some sentiment connected with it which 

 made it seem beautiful, is the only reason or the only 

 excuse that can be given for its existence. But all 

 are not of this character, and to those who have 

 something besides Cornish tin and copper in their 

 souls, who are not wholly devoted to their own and, 

 incidentally, to their county's, material prosperity, I 

 would appeal to rescue from degradation and to pre- 

 serve unspoilt for all time this precious spot to which 

 pilgrims resort from all the land. 



It is not necessary, I hope, to describe the Land's 

 End as the county's best "asset" or as the "goose 



