there is little doubt that in a very few years
the list of wrecks on our own coasts would
be greatly diminished.

Some competent legal authority,
accustomed to sift and to weigh evidence, would
be also requisite, to direct the inquiries, and
to assist the deliberations, of a board of
professional sailors, such as is here proposed.
The Law furnishes many gentlemen exercising
their profession in towns along our coasts. A
small fee for each inquiry would ensure their
services; and they would form a novel but
useful body of Sea-Coroners.

IF THIS SHOULD MEET HIS EYE—

—I SHALL be glad to treat with him. He
will be affectionately received. When I
say "his" eye, I mean C. D.; and, when I say
C. D., I mean a Cornish Daw.

The fact is, I am terribly in want of a pair
of Cornish Choughs: not dead skins, covered
with feathers and stuffed with tow and wire;
but pleasant, lively fellows, that would create
a little merriment and cause a little trouble.
Luckily, state affairs, of a delicate and
important nature, carried me just now into the
far West of England. Now, or never, for a
pair of red-legged Cornubeans! To return
without them would be too humiliating,
however well diplomacy might go off.

The world knows that Westward railways
terminate at Plymouth; but no one save
Mr. Wilkie Collins, and the readers of his
pleasant book, know the wonders that lie
beyond them.

"Now, sir! " says the guard, "we start in
one minute."

"Well, but I 've been travelling all night,
and have had no breakfast, except a bottle of
soda-water."

"That can't be helped—the mail is off. If
you want to go by her "—

"If!" Of course, I do; and I mount.

After this personal sacrifice, I feel as sure
of the choughs as if each bird had already
had on its tail the weight of a pinch of magic
salt.

The canter to Devonport is pleasant enough ,
but how are we to drive across that
magnificent harbour, between the three-deckers and
no-deckers, and steamers and fishing-boats?
How? Why, at the water's-edge awaits us
a steam bridge. Coach-and-four trot on to
it steadily; a slight buzzing in the centre of
the concern makes itself heard; lo, we reach
the Cornish shore.

Well done, horses! sober, and yet spirited.
As we commence penetrating the promontory
of Celts and ancient Britons, the steam bridge
starts on its way back with a noble freight of
donkey-carts.

Cornwall abounds in tin, copper, fish,
chinaclay, and saints.

The mines are a nuisance; covering the
earth with sterile rubbish, disfiguring the
landscape with ugly buildings and "Bals,"
and giving one the horrors, with their clanking
chains and slow-swinging levers. The
miners are a healthy, kind-hearted, good set
of fellows; poverty is nearly unknown among
them; and you may walk at night in
safety from Launceston to the Land's End.
English outrages and murders are mentioned
with horror.

Mines are spoken of in the feminine
gender: "Oh! she's a wonderful mine!
Mr. Moneyman, of Exeter, is getting his
nine thousand a-year out of her." Or, "I 'm
afraid she's almost knocked "—(up).
Prepositions are sometimes dispensed with in
Cornwall: "What have you done—[with]—
my hat?" Is this a Celtic or a British idiom?
"She can't work well, there's so much water
in her."

As to the pilchards and other seafaring
fry, "Death to thousands!" is the standing
toast. Last summer (1851), in Mount's Bay,
as many pilchards were enclosed, at one time
in one net, as fetched twelve thousand pounds.
So closely were they circumvented and
huddled together, that it was said two fish in
the net had no more elbow-room than three
when packed and salted in the cellar,

The china-clay diggings look like cuts into
a vast unripe cheese. The pits are the
curd-vats; and the women dressed in long white
pinafores, who manipulate, for sixpence
a-day, the unshaped teacups and saucers,
long before they are capable of containing
the refreshing beverage—must surely be
Opera Nuns, escaped from Robert the Devil,
and come into the country for the benefit of
their health. The water which runs from
the works where the china-clay is prepared,
looks like streams of milk. If there were
but plenty of honey—and beehives are
not rare—the clay district might be truly
called a land flowing with milk and honey.
It is wonderful that the proprietors do not
cause these milky brooks to discharge
themselves and settle in some large reservoir.
The particles of alumina held longest in
suspension, being the finest, they would yield
china-clay of extra-delicate quality.

Cornwall has been thickly colonised by
saints. This county alone would furnish a
numerous celestial hierarchy. When Catalani,
the singer, was shown the handsome
interior of a Gothic building, whose walls
were covered with the portraits of mayors
and aldermen, she inquired, in her simplicity,
"E chi sono tutti questi santi?"—"And who
are all these saints?"—Had she taken a lesson
on the map of Cornwall, she might pertinently
have asked the same question. Every second
town and village and parish is called "St."
something. Saints here, there, and everywhere.
Multitudes of them are emigrants
from Ireland. They came over in such droves,
that they seem to have been hard put to it
at home, and to have been sent to England
wholesale, with a free passage, provided by
some holy Board of Guardians to the Pauper