JOUENAL 



OF THE 



EOYAL INSTITUTION OF CORNWALL. 



No. VIII. OCTOBER. 1867. 



I. — Tin Trade behveen Britain and Alexandria in the Seventh Century. 

 — By Edward Smirke, Vice-Warden «f the Stannaries, President 

 of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, &c. 



THERE is a class of historical authorities to which we are 

 generally indisposed to resort, when in search of materials for 

 secular history, because they are apt to assume in their readers a 

 faith in many marvellous incidents contained in them, which 

 critical readers of the present day can hardly be expected to feel. 

 Of such a class are many of the writers usually termed " monkish." 

 Yet of these a very large portion of the early and mediaeval history 

 of Europe mvist necessarily Consist, We read them in search of 

 records of contemporaneous events, not only because they are 

 often the only sources of information, but because, for the most 

 part, we have no reason to doubt that, in matters within their 

 knowledge, the authors are probably telling us what they believed 

 to be true. But, for the purpose of discriminating truth from error 

 or falsehood, the reader must bring to bear upon the subject a 

 competent amount of experience and judgment, and a knowledge 

 of the ordinary course of human events. What seems to us im- 

 probable we venture to doubt ; what is plainly impossible we may 

 reject without scruple. 



These remarks are by no means confined to the writers who 

 penned the annals of their times in the scriptoria of an ancient 



