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Instruction, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828.

Author: Various

Release Date: February 27, 2004 [EBook #11336]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION

Vol. XII. No. 337.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1828. [PRICE 2d.

Cheese Wring.

(_To the Editor of the Mirror_.)

[Illustration]

In presenting your readers with a representation of the Wring Cheese, I
offer a few prefatory remarks connected with the early importance of the
county in which it stands, venerable in its age, amid the storms of
elements, and the changes of religions. Its pristine glory has sunk on
the horizon of Time; but its legend, like a soft twilight of its former
day, still hallows it in the memories of the surrounding peasantry.

Cornwall is allowed by antiquaries to be the Capiterides; and the Abbe
de Fontenu, in the _Memoires de Literature_, tom. vii. p. 126, proves,
according to Vallancey, that the Phoenicians traded here for tin before
the Trojan war. Homer frequently mentions this metal; and even in
Scripture we have allusions to this land under the name of Tarshish
(Ezekiel, c. xxvii., v. 12-25), being the place whence the Tyrians
procured various metals, and among the rest, the English metal tin. It
appears that the primitive Greeks had a clearer knowledge of these
shores than those in after years; and although Homer, in his shield of
Achilles, describes the earth surrounded by water, yet Herodotus,
notwithstanding his learning and research, candidly states his ignorance
in the following words:--"Neither am I better acquainted with the
islands called Capiterides, from whence _we are said_ to have our tin."
The knowledge of these shores existed in periods so remote, that it
faded. We dwindled away into a visionary land--we lived almost in fable.
The Phoenician left us, and t