despondently on a wasting fire, the second offering to the
stranger a piece of bread, three eggs, and some sour porter corked down
in an earthenware jar, as all that her larder and cellar can afford;
fancy next an old, grim, dark church, with two or three lads leaning
against the churchyard wall, looking out together in gloomy silence on a
solitary high road; conceive a thin, slow rain falling, a cold twilight
just changing into darkness, a surrounding landscape wild, barren, and
shelterless--imagine all this, and you will have the picture before you
which presented itself to me and my companion, when we found ourselves
in the village of Morvah.

Late that night, we got to the large sea-port town of St. Ives; and
stayed there two or three days to look at the pilchard fishery, which
was then proceeding with all the bustle and activity denoting the
commencement of a good season. Leaving St. Ives, on our way up the
northern coast, we now passed through the central part of the mining
districts of Cornwall. Chimneys and engine-houses chequered the surface
of the landscape; the roads glittered with metallic particles; the walls
at their sides were built with crystallized stones; towns showed a
sudden increase in importance; villages grew large and populous; inns
disappeared, and hotels arose in their stead; people became less curious
to know who we were, stared at us less, gossiped with us less; gave us
information, but gave us nothing more--no long stories, no invitations
to stop and smoke a pipe, no hospitable offers of bed and board. All
that we saw and heard tended to convince us that we had left the
picturesque and the primitive, with the streets of Looe and the
fishermen at the Land's End; and had got into the commercial part of the
county, among sharp, prosperous, business like people--it was like
walking out of a painter's studio into a merchant's counting-house!

As we were travelling, like the renowned Doctor Syntax, in search of the
picturesque, we hurried through this populous and highly-civilized
region of Cornwall as rapidly as possible. I doubt much whether we
should not have passed as unceremoniously through the large town of
Redruth--the capital city of the mining districts--as we passed through
several towns and villages before it, had not our attention been
attracted and our departure delayed by a public notice, printed on
rainbow-coloured paper, and pasted up in the most conspicuous part of
the market-pla