described in one of our recent numbers—the
orchestra sat in a pit on one side of the lower
circle, and hell was represented by another
hollow in the area.*

* The Passion Play at Brixlegg, vol. xx, page 397.

Four miles from Perranzabuloe rises St.
Agnes Beacon, six hundred feet from the sea
level, and famous for the clay which the miners
all over Cornwall use for the candlesticks in
their hats. During the French war signalmen
were stationed here beside a bonfire, ready to
rouse the northern coast.

The crow is now so near either coast in this
promontory of England that he can dart across
with a few flaps of his wings to Fowey. This
fishing town, on a hill overlooking an estuary
environed by woody hills, was an
energetic seaport in the reign of Edward the Third,
to whose Calais-bound fleet it contributed
forty-seven ships and seven hundred and
seventy men; while Plymouth sent but
twenty-six, and London only twenty-five. The
"Fowey gallants," as they were called, grew at
last so proud and aspiring, that they refused " to
vail their bonnets" when passing Rye and
Winchelsea, and when the cinque ports seamen
launched out to enforce their right, flew at
them, drubbed them, and drove them back into
harbour. They grew so aggressive in Henry the
Sixth's reign on the French coast that the
Frenchmen fitted out a secret expedition, landed
at midnight, and fired the wasps' nest of a town.
The brave Cornishmen then retreated to Place
House, which they defended; and eventually
chased back the invaders to their ships. In
Edward the Fourth's time the daring of
the Fowey people degenerated into piracy,
and the men of Dartmouth were ordered to
confiscate their ships. The spirited little town
never recovered this blow to its pride. The
entrance to the harbour was, in Henry the
Eighth's time, guarded by forts and a chain, a
few links of which have been dredged up by
fishermen. In the reign of Charles the Second
the plucky little place saved a fleet of our
merchantmen, and with its fort guns drove back
a Dutch line-of-battle ship that was swooping at
our vessels. In 1644 the Parliamentarian army
surrendered here to the king, and Essex stole
away by sea to Plymouth.

Hill-throned Redruth next for the crow, in
its dreary country of copper mines, with steam
pumping engines pulsing and stamping, and
wheels turning, and metal carting off for the
Swansea vessels. Underground, at a depth
equal to five times the height of St. Paul's,
swart Cornish men are busy with their picks
and blasting powder. One mile off in the
desolate country is Gwennap pit, the
subsidence of a disused mine in the side of Carn
Marth. This is the pit where Wesley, in the
days of his persecutions, upheld by his love of
God and his love of power, preached to thirty
thousand rough miners. Though growing old
at the time, his voice was distinctly heard by
every one present. He was now seventy, yet
his eyes were still keen and his nerves strong.
A toilsome life had turned him into steel. He
attributed his health to rising for fifty years
at four A.M, to preaching at five in the
morning, to never travelling less than four thousand
five hundred miles in a year, and never losing
a night's sleep in his life. Two violent fevers
and two deep consumptions, he said, had been
his rough but useful medicines. " Ten thousand
cares were no more oppression to him than so
many hairs to his head." The Wesleyans still
hold their Whit Monday anniversary in this
consecrated pit. There is no doubt that, with
all the dangers of Revivalism, Wesley did vast
good in Cornwall; for before he came the
fishermen were wreckers who never prayed but
for a good storm to bring grist to their
unhallowed mill, and the drunken miners believed
in nothing but the Knockers, those lying spirits
that led them in their search for copper.
Cornwall, before his time, well deserved the
name it had obtained of " West Barbary."

Carr Brea, a hill near Redruth, was, as
Borlase fondly believed, the cathedral of the
Cornish Druids. There is an old castle on the
summit, now spoiled by modern fantasy. Near
this Borlase found, or thought he found, sacred
circles, pools of lustration, logans, and seats of
judgment. All these rock basins and balanced
stones are really only the result of time, that
has sifted out the looser earth and left the
harder strata bare to weather. Carr Brea, the
giant, is a great man in Cornish legend, for
here he threw granite blocks at the Devil, and
he is now supposed to lie buried beneath the
hill with one hand still emerging from the
surface. The hand is apparently a granite block
chopped into five gigantic fingers.

MELUSINA.

IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

No portion of that widely scattered
empire of which little England fulfils the
functions of heart and brain, is richer in
nature's gifts than that which, not many
years ago, was the scene of an actual life-
drama as extraordinary as ever put romance
to shame.

Severed by many a league of glistening
sea from the maternal bosom, this singular
spot suggests the image of a beautiful
wilful child, who, thrust in sudden anger
from its natural home, and, finding a place
under alien skies, surrounds itself with
conditions and characteristics that have
little in common with its former life, without
losing the energy and independent
spirit which were its true inheritance.

Golden Isle—I cannot give it its legitimate
name—possesses a climate and seasons,
habits, laws, and language of its own.
Somewhat difficult and dangerous of
access, it has less intercommunication with
the general family of mankind than any