battle ship, and, when arrived, nothing to
prevent her from laying the place in ashes,
or under contribution, as might best suit her
views. The great importance of Bombay, as
the key of communication between the upper
provinces of India and England, as the
emporium of the cotton trade, as the great
entrepôt of our Manchester, Glasgow, and
Yorkshire goods, as the seat of a most
extensive and efficient naval dockyard, and
as the capital of Western India, ought to
direct attention to this state of things; for
the place at present is as defenceless as
Southampton, and still more accessible; for
the heaviest line-of-battle ship could lie
within two hundred yards of the Custom
House, the Treasury, and the Mint. So
large a population, such extensive wealth,
so important interests, ought to demand
the most serious attention of the authorities
to their insecure state; for a blow once
struck home would be irreparable.

A sketch of Bombay would be imperfect
without a notice of the railroad now in
progress, and which is fondly thought by many
will be the forerunner of a host of others,
that are to bring the most distant cities of
India within a few hours of each other.
It is very nearly completed as far as Tannah,
the northernmost point of Salsette; and it is
progressing thence towards Callian, in the
Northern Konkan. Thence, it is hoped that
eventually it will be carried farther into the
interior, and that the Ghauts will be
surmounted, so as to bring the traffic of the
Deccan and Khandeish within its grasp; and
thus, in a great measure, remedy the crying
evil of India—the want of internal communications.
The projectors, on calculations which
are understood to have been well considered,
anticipate large profits. The East India
Company has acted wisely in so far complying
with the exigencies of the times as to
yield gracefully to the clamour for a railroad.
Its real importance or value will never be
understood in England; and it is a good tub
to throw to the whale on the approaching
discussions on the Charter.

NOT FOUND YET!

WE will cross the peninsula to the Gurnard's
Head, and beat a portion of the northern coast,
in search of those same Cornish Choughs I
sought on a former occasion, and have not
found yet. Midway, we shall have a prospect
of the two seas—the Bristol and the English
Channels—which you may imagine (if the
reality is insufficiently satisfactory) to be the
Atlantic and the Pacific, separated by the
Isthmus of Darien. Turning our backs on the
lovely crescent of Mount's Bay, up we go; up
—up—up. It is worth while looking round
now and then, to see how affectionately the
bluff promontories of the Lizard and
St. Paul stretch out their weather-beaten
arms to shelter and protect their bosom
friends, their snugly-nursed darlings,
Penzance and Marazion. If, after searching and
peering and sweeping our vision over these
expanses, we do not get sight of a Chough or
two, it will be very remarkable.

We shall observe, in the course of the
present jaunt, that, to compensate for the
undue proportion of saintly titles which
adorn so many of the parishes and little
towns, others—whose names are a
combination of merely profane syllables—are
remarkable for the agreeable sound and
measured accent with which they fall upon
the ear. Mara-zion, Trevescan, Rosevarnen,
Tregony, and a host of others, which, if I
were meditating an epic, should pass before
you in Indian file: these harmonious scraps
of geography would be useful to the most
elegant novelist that ever wrote for a
fastidious public. Some of the scenery, too, is
of a very sentimental description, and reads
as well upon paper as it is delightful to the
traveller. We are now about half-way; we are
crossing an extensive grove of pinasters, with
an underwood of gigantic rhododendrons—now
meeting overhead in thickets, now dispersed
as independent evergreens.

Your eye has been attracted by that strange
object to the right, not far from the road,
which you might take to be a rude, clumsy,
three-legged stool, made up with pieces of
unhewn stone. It is called here the Ludgvan
(pronounced Ludyan) quoit. You are too
well read not to know that it is a cromlech,
and engravings will have given you an
imperfect idea of its appearance; but did you
ever in your life see anything with such a
mysteriously old look? It is this
characteristic which artists cannot easily express:
most of their cromlechs might have been sent
the other day from the Penryn quarries,
along with the granite for Waterloo Bridge.
All the (what are called) Druidical remains
have the same fearful stamp of unimaginable
antiquity. It is that—not the magnitude, not
the singular arrangement, but the age,
defying investigation—which gives to Stonehenge
its power over the imagination. Roman
ruins, Cyclopæan walls, are nothing to them.
Fossil remains—even trilobites, in tolerable
preservation—have, in comparison, all the
freshness of new-laid eggs.

Although you have now some acquaintance
with Cornish gales, you would hardly credit
that, one extra-stormy night, the upper stone
was blown from off its three supports. There
are many fools in the world, who value
themselves, like butchers' meat, by the stone, and
whose sole strength lies in their shoulders,
and in the calves of their legs. However, the
quoit was displaced, either by the wind, or by
the rogue Nobody. Happily it has returned
to its original points of suspension.

And, pray, what was the purpose of these
monstrous three-legged stools and circles of
huge stones ? Ah!  what, indeed ? Some will
tell you one thing, some another—temples,