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Old Haunts and Remains of a Cornish Genius.

385 they should have created and earnestly believed in a cosmical theory with such small means of observation as they possessed, is an illustration of the impatience of the human understanding under imperfect knowledge. The swift conception fills the gap of the uninvestigated or unascertainable fact; and a splendid temple of science is raised, where men worship the work of their own hands. And better so than no worship at all.

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90 Aristotle approaches nearer to Plato in his Physics than in any other part of his philosophy. He felt the vortex of dialectic drawing him into it. As Plato diverted attention from nature itself to the ideas of his intellectual world, so Aristotle, looking into the human mind for the primary principles of the sciences, rather than into the phenomena of each, overlooked their real difference in his mode of treating them. It is curious to find how widely these great thinkers departed in physics from ascertained facts! 60

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On the other hand, Bacon raised no theory. He sharpened instruments, and threw out hints. He did not build a house. upon sand; he only laid a foundation, but it was upon the rock. The edifice is still building, will always be building; and there are more labourers peacefully engaged in raising it than ever wrangled over the ashes of the ancient masters.

ART. IV. 1. Antiquities, historical and monumental, of the County of Cornwall, &c., &c. Second Edition. By WILLIAM BORLASE, LL.D., F.R.S., Rector of Ludgvan, Cornwall. London. 1769.

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2. The Natural History of Cornwall, &c., &c. By WILLIAM ⠀⠀BORLASE, A.M., FR.S. Oxford. 1758.

3. Observations on the ancient and present State of the Islands of Scilly, and their Importance to the Trade of Great Britain.

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By WILLIAM BORLASE, A.M., F.R.S. Oxford. 1756.

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I CANNOT find words,' says a master of both pencil and pen, I cannot find words to express the intense pleasure I have always in first finding myself, after some prolonged stay in England, at the foot of the old tower of Calais church,—of which the largeness and age are opposed exactly to the chief appearances of modern England, as one feels them on first returning to it that marvellous smallness both of houses and scenery, then that spirit of trimness. The smooth paving stones; the scraped and hard, even, rutless, roads; the neat gates and plates, and essence of border and order, and spikeness

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and spruceness." This is outspoken and well meanthat whatever any lover of largeness may say in its behalf, the old Calais tower must not be allowed to spend that new existence which it owes to the champion of modern painters in teaching English people to fall out with the houses and scenery of their native island. We very well remember a man, crazed by selfconceit, who, under the ruling notion that he was grown too big for the place of his birth, used to seek for more room by periodically jumping over the garden wall. It is to be feared that many such cases may yet be found and for the sake of the afflicted, every kind heart must have been gladdened at the news that the way was to be clear for them to leap their native hedges at any time, without the danger of being very unpleasantly looked into or measured on the other side thats lin fact, for the future, they might spring over to the foot of the favourite old tower, and stand unquestioned even without a passport, to enjoy their enlargement beneath the shadow of its brick work, full of bolts, and holes, and ugly fissures and yet strong, having, as its friend expresses it, an infinite fof symbolism in it; '-symbolizing, indeed, it may be, that policy or power which would fain make England and every thing in t look small. If, however, this sense of English smallness should turn out to be an epidemic, like one of those in Hecker's gossiping stories about the Epidemics of the Middle Ages, and the bulk of our population should manifest the jumping symptoms, we would guard those who are as yet happy and healthy, against becoming blinded to the true state of things; and assure them that if the uneasy crowds take to leaping over their garden pales, and spurning the old green fences of their patrimony, it is not because their houses are really smaller than their neighbours', or their fields narrower than in their forefathers? time, but simply because their fancy has become unnaturally swollen and flighty. Littleness, while in a large dwelling, or in the presence of great mountains or broad deserts, may have feelings which it mistakes for a consciousness of its own grandeur; and, like that wonderful spire on the other side of the Channel, may be scornful of the marvellous smallness' with which much nobler spirits have been content. But a great house is not necessary to true greatness. A mind of lofty rank makes room for itself wherever Providence gives it birth. It keeps up to the height of its being any where and every where. What lessons of modesty may be gathered during a ramble among the old dwelling-places and favourite haunts of English genius! Our greatest men have chosen to nestle in little houses. The noblest creations of English genius have

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Pope and Borlase.

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sprung from amidst our tiniest meadows and garden plots. A quiet witness to this still lingers on the banks of the Avon. He who gave immortal blessing to the world by singing of Paradise Lost and Regained, loved his narrow lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, or his garden home behind Aldersgate Street, or his simple Buckinghamshire cottage. And who can look at the modest home of that retiring poet at Weston, or visit the dove's nest of Felicia Hemans, or linger at Stowey in front of that homely abode in which Coleridge used to think, or approach the plain, walls which once held Southey and his books, or go with De Quincey into the white cottage where he first met the author of the Excursion, without feeling that, our most marvellous smallness both of houses and scenery has claims on our heart which can never be rivalled by any height of brickwork, though it were Babel itself, or by any magnitudes of mere landscape, were they even those of the western prairies, or the all-commanding Himalayas?

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It is true that the dwelling of one English genius might have afforded an illustration of what has been called the spirit of trimness, the essence of border and order.' Pope's home was much like his Homer; and his grounds and grotto were perhaps fair specimens of spikeness and spruceness' in the arrangement of their temple work of shells and pebbles, and spas and minérals, and perpetual rills' and little dripping murmurs; and yet this exception is strangely associated with some of the most open and free, the wildest and most rudely natural haunts of human genius that ever inspired us with alternations of awe and boisterous joy, and delicious peacefulness. Many of the materials for the poet's grotto were furnished by a contemporary Cornish genius, whose name in capital letters was wrought into the decorations of the shadowy retreat with quartz crystals sent from the copper mines of the west. The name was that of William Borlase; and among the many letters addressed to him by Pope is one in which the contributions to the grottoare acknowledged in the great versifier's own way. I am much obliged to you for your valuable collection of Cornish diamonds. I have placed them, where they may best represent yourself, in a shade, but shining. The man whose chosen style of life was expressed in the adornments of Twickenham, was not likely to disturb his shining' friend by visiting the shade in which he solaced himself for life, far away on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic; but for our part we always preferred the wild and breezy nest of Dr. Borlase to the gingerbread paradise of the little man who felt himself to be another Horace, amidst his small porticoes and pilasters. Away, then,

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to the old haunt of that queer but true genius, William Borlase, antiquary and parson. He stuck to the house in which he was born,—a beautiful example of contentment with the home of his fathers. It was a lone house, on a lone promontory, inhabited, as the gay world would think, by a lone man. The old dwelling is still there, overlooking the sea; but the genius who nestled in it during Pope's day, has left nothing but the embodiment of his lifethoughts in two folios and one thin quarto. A very little time ago this was far away from all rails, whether main line or branch,? on the utmost coast of Cornwall, in a district which is a little better known now than it was in our younger days; but it is not yet known as it deserves by those even who best deserve to know it. Of these, too many are still in danger of putting on a knowing look at the mention of Cornwall, and of showing their knowledge of the world after the manner of a gentleman citizen in the metropolis, who, when a friend of ours was introduced as a visitor from Cornwall, said, Ah, I thought so, one can't mistake the dialect of the north! Bradshaw' now shows is that the line is open to Penzance; and those, therefore, who wish to be carried by steam as near as may be to the Land's End, may cross the old western border of early Saxondom, the Tamar, over Brunel's masterpiece of a bridge, and find themselves; by and by, within walking distance of the scenes which are still haunted by the spirit-like traditions of Dr. Borlase's life. Nor need the most delicately strung nervous system fear the ordinary railway dirt and drive when they get below the Cornish frontier. Every thing is then simple and clean. Even trains creepor glide genteelly; so that should there be more than one who has learnt to harmonize love for modern painters with perfect hatred of railway travel, they may dismiss all apprehension of being transmuted into a living parcel,' as, while they are on the Cornish line at least, they are quite safe from any call to part with the nobler characteristics of their humanity for the sake of a planetary power of locomotion. As the train runs along the beach towards Penzance,after leaving the old town of Marazion, or Market-Jew, at some time in the dim past a favourite tin mart with the Beni Israel, the traveller, calling off his eye a moment from the storied and graceful Mount St. Michael, around which the waters of the bay so cheerfully and lovingly gather, may see a tower far up on the hill on the land side. That is Ludgvan Church town. var mi

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There, for more than half a century, William Borlase lived as rector, and there, in the parish sanctuary, his dust reposes under a plain memorial stone. That old tower has served as a land-mark to fishermen for many generations; and in our

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389 younger days we have looked at the marshes which then guarded the slopes of the old doctor's parish, and shuddered to hear stories of poor nien led astray by Will-o'-the-wisp and smothered in the bog, while trying to gain their cottage hearth of a winter's night. The scene is changed now the ancient bog has given place to garden plots and potatoe grounds, supplying luxuries to the London markets. But we are not inclined to linger by the doctor's sepulchre. We shall prefer the scene of his birth, and his favourite parish. For it must be understood that he had two parishes; he was rector of Ludgvan Lees, and for forty years was honoured as the vicar of St. Just. He was a pluralist, therefore, and how he managed to perform spiritual cares on a double scale we cannot tell. He must have worked hard; and yet a little more could have been borne, it seems, judging from the plaintive way in which a respectable biographer says, that two livings were all the preferments he ever had? Nobody who knows Dr. Borlase's books will think that his bur den of honour was more than he deserved; but we cannot help thinking of the many good parsons to whom the preferment of a single living would be salvation from daily distress. But how away to St. Just. The western St. Just, we mean, not that quiet little village, whose church, dedicated to the same saint or another of the same name, looks down upon the beautiful land-locked har bour of Falmouth, on the other coast of the Cornish peninsula! It was before railway times that we first mounted the hills which shelter Penzance, and smile with such calm joyfulness upon Mount's Bay. The western heights were mastered, and then there came a rush of new life giving springiness to body and soul as the wide sea burst on our sight, and we found ourselves amidst open and seemingly tenantless moors, and fantastic cairns, and heathy swells, and hills crowned with cromlech stones or giants quoits, all seemingly overhanging the swelling wilderness of waters, which here was bright with sunbeams, and there dark beneath a passing rain-cloud. There, at length, was old St. Just in her glory. And now we mounted a gig, and were driven off toward the north, along by the sea, in a style which would have brought the nervous system of a Lincolnshire farmer to illustrate Hartley's pretty theory of infinitesimal vibrations, or have made the spinal chord of even a London cabman quiver and ring out a novel set of discords. It was indeed a style somewhat peculiar to our St. Just friend and driver; a strange combination of daring, skill, and power. "Off we went, down rattling over a steep, queerly twisted, and in some places bare rock-bottomed road, into a treeless" valley which bore here and there unmistakeable tokens of the last

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