streams lies modern Truro,
with its stately cathedral rising high above the houses that surround
it. Truro's most eminent son, Samuel Foote, was born in 1720 at the town
house of his father's family, the Footes of Lambesso. The house, now the
Red Lion Hotel in Boscawen Street, has retained a good many of its
original features, including a very fine oak staircase. Foote is
generally considered to be the greatest of the dramatic authors of his
class, while in power of mimicry and broad humour he had few equals. In
late life he lost his leg through an accident in riding, a circumstance
that led to his producing a play, _The Lame Lover_, in which his loss of
a limb might be made a positive advantage. In all, his plays and
dramatic pieces number about twenty, and he boasted at the close of his
life that he had enriched the English stage with sixteen quite new
characters.

Truro was also the birthplace of the brothers Richard and John Lander,
the explorers; Bode, a painter of some merit; and Richard Polwhele, the
historian of Devon and Cornwall.

[Illustration: THE HARBOUR, FOWEY]

The cathedral is not entirely a modern building, for it has incorporated
with it the south aisle of the old parish church of St. Mary, with its
long associations with the municipality. The narrow lanes and streets
surrounding the stately pile of buildings differ essentially from the
gardens and canonical residences that are the pride of so many of our
mediaeval cathedrals; but they make a fitting environment for the mother
church of a working ecclesiastical centre.

Of several interesting houses in the neighbourhood the most important is
Tregothnan, the residence of Lord Falmouth. The mansion is beautifully
placed upon high ground, the views from which include the numerous
wooded creeks of the lovely Fal, and the wide expanse of Falmouth
Harbour, studded with the shipping of many nations. The house was
designed by Wilkins, the architect of the National Gallery, and is in
the Early English and Tudor styles.

The gatehouse of Tregothnan is situated at Tresilian Bridge, the spot
where the struggle between Charles I and Cromwell was brought to a close
in Cornwall, by the surrender of the Royalists to General Fairfax.

The ecclesiologist will find many interesting old churches in this
neighbourhood, of which perhaps that at Probus is the most important, as
it is the least known. The tower is over one hundred feet in height,
being the highest in t