ning know
that it has been a fertile field for the growth and exemplification of
false taste. Yet the plea of botanical interest, educational use, may
be added to the attraction of rarity as a defence of all such
cultivations as we find not only at Heligan and Mount Edgcumbe, but at
Morrab Gardens and Tresco. Those of us who dislike them can keep away.
But Heligan has a reputation also for genuine English beauty. The old
mill here has been a favourite with many artists, and has become
familiar in many an exhibition-room. At Lanshadron, close by, is a
mutilated cross, which is perhaps unique in having an inscription
around its base; the inscription being Latin. Heligan is in the parish
of St. Ewe, which is usually supposed to be a dedication to St.
Eustachius; but non-Celtic saints are almost as much out of place in
Cornwall as exotic plants are, and St. Ewe was probably some forgotten
British or Welsh missionary. A former clergyman of this parish appears
to have been notable as a healer of bodies as well of souls. We read
of him that "Martin Atwell, parson of St. Ewe about 1600, was a
physician of body as well as soul: now and then he used blood-letting
or bleeding, and administered Marius Christi and other like cordials,
yet mostly for all diseases he prescribed milk, and very often milk
and apples, and recovered sundry out of desperate and forlorn
extremities: his liberality was very great, his affection for religion
sound, and he turned out with both hands _in pios usus_." Certainly a
most enlightened man for his time, and if we could only add that he
recommended the milk to be sour we should have brought his modernity
to the highest point.

Mevagissey, about six miles south-west of St. Austell, was once one of
the most flourishing fishing-ports on the Cornish coast, and though
it has not quite maintained its relative position, it is not done with
yet. The town can also boast some fame as the Aberalva of Kingsley's
_Two Years Ago_, a book once far more popular than it is to-day. The
same claim has been made for Clovelly; but though some features in the
novelist's description may be applied equally to both, there are other
points that can only be attributed to Mevagissey. Kingsley, who wrote
the book fifty years since, says: "Between two ridges of high pebble
bank some twenty yards apart, comes Alva River rushing to the sea. On
the opposite ridge, a low white house, with three or four white
canvas-covered boats and a