one side, and a lake on the other. But now, the Pool occupies
only its ordinary limits--now, the mill-wheels turn busily once more,
and the smooth paths and gliding streams reappear in their former
beauty, until the next winter rains shall come round, and the next
winter floods shall submerge them again.

At the time when I visited the lake, its waters were unusually low.
Here, they ran calm and shallow, into little, glassy, flowery creeks,
that looked like fairies' bathing places. There, out in the middle, they
hardly afforded depth enough for a duck to swim in. Near to the Bar,
however, they spread forth wider and deeper; finely contrasted, in
their dun colour and perfect repose, with the flashing foaming breakers
on the other side. The surf forbade all hope of swimming; but, standing
where the spent waves ran up deepest, and where the spray flew highest
before the wind, I could take a natural shower-bath from the sea, in one
direction; and the next moment, turning round in the other, could wash
the sand off my feet luxuriously in the soft, fresh waters of Loo Pool.

VI.

THE LIZARD.

We had waited throughout one long rainy day at Helston--"remote,
unfriended, melancholy, slow"--for a chance of finer weather before we
started to explore the Lizard promontory. But our patience availed us
little. The next morning, there was the soft, thick, misty Cornish rain
still falling, just as it had already fallen without cessation for
twenty-four hours. To wait longer, in perfect inactivity, and in the
dullest of towns--doubtful whether the sky would clear even in a week's
time--was beyond mortal endurance. We shouldered our knapsacks, and
started for the Lizard in defiance of rain, and in defiance of our
landlady's reiterated assertions that we should lose our way in the
mist, when we walked inland; and should slip into invisible holes, and
fall over fog-veiled precipices among the rocks, if we ventured to
approach the coast.

What sort of scenery we walked through, I am unable to say. The rain was
above--the mud was below--the mist was all around us. The few objects,
near at hand, that we did now and then see, dripped with wet, and had a
shadowy visionary look. Sometimes, we met a forlorn cow steaming
composedly by the roadside--or an old horse, standing up to his fetlocks
in mire, and sneezing vociferously--or a good-humoured peasant, who
directed us on our road, and informed us with a grin, that this sort of
"f