used the words, "Please, sir?"-a form of | I'm not young any longer, that's sure," she interrogation which we often heard in the neighborhood of Redruth. "You seem to be old for such hard work," we repeated. "Deed, sir, I don't know how old I am, but I've been at it this forty years. answered, in a clear voice with scarcely any accent. "Are you married?" "No, sir; nobody would ever have me," she continued, without relaxing from her gravity or delaying her work for a moment-"no She had nearly filled the wagon by this time, and two younger women, dressed as she was, but more vigorous-looking, came to help her, and after spitting on their hands, which were as large and as hard as any man's, they applied themselves with shovels to the heap of ore, falling into a machine-like swing of the body as they scooped up the heavy rock. Two men afterward joined them, and when the wagon was loaded, they propelled it along the track toward the mill, the women sharing the work equally with the men, if, indeed, they did not use even greater exertions. body would have me or go with me, as I was always subject to fits-terrible they are. I still have 'em once or twice a week sometimes, always with a change in the moon." "How do you account for it?" "Why, before my twenty-fourth year I was in the service of a lady, who threw me down stairs, and that changed my blood; so, when the moon changes, I have the fits. Little can be done for them when the blood's changed." This superstition was a matter of profound faith with her, but otherwise her manner was remarkably intelligent. She told us that her wages were fourteenpence-twentyeight cents-a day; and when we unnecessarily said that she must be tired of work at such a price, she answered, in a bitter tone, "No use being tired; when you are tired, there's the work-house for you." The employment of women underground is now forbidden by law, the degradation resulting from it having been perceived by English legislators only when it had become flagitious; but of thirteen thousand persons engaged in the Even a learned antiquarian, in alluding to the epochs of Karn Brea, which near the summit is a rabbit-warren, and therefore an attractive place to poachers, did not think a little jocularity ill-timed in the consideration of so serious a subject. It is most interesting, he said to his audience, which was when they observed him. Though his manner is characterized by a dignified reserve discouraging to familiarity, one of these young persons saucily said to her neighbor, "He's going to put you into a panorama!" Except the old woman whose blood had been changed, we did not meet with any one who entertained any sort of superstition, and who did not more or less frustrate us in our search for the unleavened and old-fashioned simplicity of character which we expected to find in Cornwall. Those to whom we spoke took as an offense to their intelligence our insidiously framed questions which were designed to THE GUILDHALL, LOOE. quite unexpectant of any approaching | betray them into a confession of faith in levity, to contemplate the successive periods through which Cornwall has passed from the early times when there were native burying-places to the cromlech period, the cromlechs seeming to have belonged to different races passing to the south; after the cromlech period the Karn shows evidences of the Roman period; then of the early Middle Ages, and of the late Middle Ages. He once found articles of the Roman-British time, and, finally, said this playful savant, he fount a ferret bell. The artist who shared our umbrella in Cornwall used his sketch-book while we were watching the young women in the mill, and they were not at all disconcerted witchcraft. The sufferer from "fits" in the olden time either went into the churchyard at midnight, and cut from one of the spouts three bits of lead, each about the size of a farthing, or, if it was a young woman, she sat in the church porch after service, and as the young men passed, each of them dropped a penny into her lap, until the thirtieth came; he took up the pence, and substituted half a crown for them, and with this coin in her hand she walked three times round the communion table (when she could get the opportunity, which was a matter of some difficulty, as the minister was not friendly to this sort of thing), and afterward had the half-crown made into a ring, which of this very much modernized island we had found one individual in whom legend still bloomed, with its roots deep down in the imagination. His infirmity was caused by rheumatism, and the old Cornish cure for this complaint was the bathing of the parts afflicted with water in which a thunder-bolt had been boiled. "What do you do for it?" we inquired, and he looked so very simple that we felt sure that he sought relief by other means than the vulgar nostrums of the chemist's shop. "Well," he said, "it isn't much good doing anything; but I mostly try Turkish baths and galvanism." A local poet has written: "The world has grown so wise and grand, It is indeed so. Cornwall reminds us of an old castle which has been stripped of its mantle of ivy. The vine may have been poisonous and weakening to the structure, but it was more beautiful to look at than the naked stones. The superstitions of the people may have been weeds rooted in ignorance, but they were more interesting than the prosaic and unimaginative condition which their extraction has left. We entered the county where the Tamar, reaching up to the north from the Channel, separates Cornwall from Devonshire-at the busy and picturesque city of Plymouth, where war seems to be an ever-present possibility, and red-coats and blue-jackets preponderate on the streets. The trumpets blare all day long, and the vast iron-clads and transports of the navy are constantly passing in and out of the beautiful harbor on imperial errands. The Sound is an irregular bay, with the city at the head of it, about three miles from the sea. An enemy would be under the cover of guns from all quarters, so well is the harbor fortified; but in these times of peace the terraced embankments of granite and turf, with bases of spiked black rocks, are inviting to loungers, and the brownest of the Jack Tars lying on the grass has most likely never seen in his large experience of the world a more interesting picture than Plymouth Sound with its fleets of war and commerce, its cliffs reaching to Rame Head at the estuary, the long breakwater that shuts out the violence of the storms, and the softly green heights of Mount Edgcombe on the Cornwall shore. The For several miles up the river we pass along a continuous line of war vessels at anchor, all "in ordinary," dismasted and apparently abandoned: some of them ludicrously deficient in the speed and strength which their names imply, some that look like immense fortresses, and some that are of the latest pattern. old line-of- battle ships, two and three deckers, the smaller steam - frigates, the early iron-clad propellers, and the compact turret ships of recent build are drawn up between the peaceful banks of the Tamar even beyond the magnificent bridge, half a mile long, one hundred and twenty feet above high-water mark, with which the daring genius of Brunel spanned the river some twenty years ago. From underneath the vertical piers the bridge looks like a great screen, so disproportionate is its width to its length and height. It has only one track upon it, and |