_A scene on the coast of Cornwall._


A short time before my departure from the hamlet of Landwithiel,[4] I
was awoke early one morning by the roaring of the wind in the huge old
chimney of my room--the whole tenement, indeed, occasionally shook as a
violent gust swept down the valley, tossing the branches of the stout
old tree before the door to and fro in a way that threatened at last to
level them with the dust. The very briny scent of the atmosphere
convinced me there was some sea running in the bay; and it was the more
unexpected as we had had no tokens of a storm for several days previous.
From the peninsular situation of this county, surrounded on almost every
side with the restless ocean and exposed to the wide sweep of the
Atlantic, it may be supposed that storms are of frequent occurrence. As
on the present occasion, they often come with little or no warning; and
the effects of a hurricane in the distant main, far outstripping the
wind, sometimes rolls with tremendous fury towards our western shores,
on which the sea is encroaching in every part.

[4] See "Recollections of a Wanderer," _Mirror_, Nos. 430-475.

Landwithiel was a wild little place. It was essentially a "fishing
village." The people ploughed the deep, not the land; and the constant
exposure--blow high, blow low--on the restless sea, endued its
inhabitants, and the Cornish fishermen generally, with a fearlessness of
danger and boldness of character almost unequalled in these islands. The
lives and pursuits of the two great classes in this county--the maritime
and mining population--are widely opposite to each other. The one class
pass their existence on the stormy waters of the deep, whilst the other
labour far below the surface of the earth; each being continually