.near this patient; they were literally piled and packed with tracts. "We get a great many," she said, seeing me look at them-"more than we can read." Poor soul! I hope her belladonna-plaister has done her good!

As we came away the nurse stopped for a moment to speak to quite an elegant old lady, who was sitting up extremely nicely-dressed, in a chair, with a grand cap and ribbons, and a knitted lace shawl. It was getting late, and we began to pass blue-garbed under-nurses, carrying little trays with tea. The patients who are well enough to get down have their meals in the big dining-room; but these little trays look very nice and appetising. The whole order of the place is perfect. Some of the rooms upstairs were like little bowers, with pots flowering round the windows, birdcages hanging up, and pictures on the walls of the friends of the sick people. One pale face looks at us as we pass a white bed. Her room was like a little chapel, with light streaming in through the flowers and birdcages and the climbing greens upon the casement, and the poor martyr, alas! lying on her rack.

Here, where there is such great suffering, there is also great comfort, tender nursing, and plenty of companionship; there are likewise trees, and grasses, and sweet lilac, and gorse-blown winds, close at hand.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE LAND'S END.

Thence

We stopped on our way to admire the desolate pile of rocks and caverns which form the towering promontory called "The Holed Headland on the Left.' turning a little inland, passing over wild pathless moorsoccasionally catching distant glimpses of the sea, with the mist sometimes falling thick down to the very edges of the waves, sometimes parting mysteriously and discovering

distant crags of granite rising shadowy out of the foaming water-we reached, at last, the limits of our outward journey, and saw the Atlantic before us rolling against the westernmost extremity of the shores of England.

The stranger must ask his way before he can find out the particular mass of rocks geographically entitled to the appellation of "The Land's End." He may, however, easily discover when he has reached the district of "The Land's End," by two rather remarkable indications that he will meet with on his road. He will observe, at some distance from the coast, an old milestone marked "1," and will be informed that this is the real original first mile in England—as if all measurement of distances began strictly from the West! A little farther on he will come to a house, on one wall of which he will see written, in large letters, "This is the last Inn in England," as if the recognised beginning and end too of the island of Britain were here, and here only! Having pondered a little on the slightly exclusive view of the attributes of their locality taken by the inhabitants, he will then go forward about half-a-mile, preceded by his guide, will descend some cliffs, will walk out on a ridge of rocks till he can go no farther, and will then be told that he is standing on the Land's End.

Here, as elsewhere, there are certain "sights" which stranger is required to examine assiduously, as a duty if not as a pleasure, by guide-book law, rigidly administered by guides. There is, first of all, the mark of a horse's hoof, which is carefully kept sharply modelled (to borrow the painter's phrase) in the thin grass at the edge of the precipice. This mark commemorates the narrow escape from death of a military man, who for a wager rode a horse down the cliff to the extreme verge of the Land's End, where the poor animal, seeing its danger, turned in affright, reared, and fell back into the sea raging over the rocks beneath. The foolhardy rider had just sense enough left

to throw himself off in time; he tumbled on the ground within a few inches of the precipice, and so barely saved the life which he had richly deserved to lose.

After the mark of the hoof, the traveller is next desired to look at a natural tunnel in the outer cliff, which pierces it through from one end to the other. Then his attention is directed to a lighthouse built on a reef of rocks detached from the land; and he is told of the great waves which break over the top of the building during the winter storms. Lastly, he is requested to inspect a quaint protuberance in a pile of granite at a little distance off, which bears a remote resemblance to a gigantic human face, adorned with a short beard, which, he is informed, is considered quite a portrait of Dr. Johnson!--it is, therefore, publicly known as "Johnson's Head." If it can fairly be compared with the countenance of any remarkable character that ever existed, it may be said to exhibit in violent exaggeration the worst physiognomical peculiarities of Nero and Henry VIII., combined in one face!

These several local curiosities having been duly examined, the visitor is at last left free to look at the Land's End in his own way. Before him stretches the wide wild ocean, the largest of the Scilly Islands being barely discernible on the extreme horizon on clear days; tracts of heath, fields where corn is blown by the wind into mimic waves-downs, valleys, and crags mingle together, picturesquely and confusedly, until they are lost in the distance on the left. On the right is a magnificent bay, bounded at either extremity by far-stretching promontories rising from a beach of the purest white sand, on which the yet whiter foam of the surf is ever seething, as waves on waves break one behind the other. The whole bold view possesses all the sublimity which vastness and space can bestow; but it is that sublimity which is to be seen, not described-which the heart may acknowledge and the mind contain, but which no mere

words may delineate-which even painting itself may but faintly reflect.

However, it is after all the walk to the Land's End along the southern coast, rather than the Land's End itself, which displays the grandest combination of scenery in which this grandest part of Cornwall abounds. There Nature appears in her most triumphant glory and beauty; there every fresh turn, as the traveller proceeds, offers some new prospect, which awakens some fresh impression. All objects that are met with, great and small, moving and motionless, seem united in perfect harmony, to form a scene where original images may still be found by the poet, and where original pictures are waiting, ready composed, for the painter's eye.

On approaching the wondrous landscapes between Trereen and the Land's End, the first characteristic that strikes one is the change that has taken place in the forms of the cliffs since the Lizard Head was left behind. Variously-shaped and variously-coloured "serpentine" rocks no longer present themselves to the eye; it is granite, and granite alone, that appears everywheregranite less lofty and less eccentric in form than the "serpentine" cliffs and crags, but presenting an appearance of adamantine solidity and strength, a mighty breadth of outline, and an unbroken vastness of extent, admirably adapted to the purpose of protecting the shores of Cornwall, where they are most exposed to the fury of the Atlantic waves.

In these wild districts, the sea rolls and roars in fiercer agitation, and the mist falls thicker, and at the same time fades and changes faster, than elsewhere. Vessels pitching heavily in the waves are seen to dawn at one moment in the clearing atmosphere, and then at another, as it abruptly thickens, to fade again mysteriously, like phantom ships. Upon the top of the cliffs, furze and heath in brilliant clothing of purple-andyellow, cluster close round great white weird masses of

rock, which are dotted fantastically with patches of grey. green moss. The solitude on these heights is unbroken; no houses are to be seen-often no pathway is to be found. One goes on, guided by the sight of the sea, when the sky brightens fitfully; and by the sound of the sea, when one strays instinctively from the edge of the cliff, as mist and darkness gather once more densely and solemnly all around.

Then, when the path appears again—a winding path that descends rapidly-a new scene is gradually entered upon. Old horses startle one by scrambling into perilous situations, to pick dainty bits by the hillside; sheep fettered by the fore and hind leg, hobble away desperately as the stranger advances. Suddenly is seer a small strip of beach shut in snugly between protecting rocks. A spring bubbles down from an inland valley, while not far off, an old stone well collects the water into a calm clear pool. Sturdy little cottages built of rough granite and thickly thatched, stand near, with gulls' and cormorants' eggs set in their loopholed windows for ornament; great white sections of fish hang thickly together on the walls to dry, looking more like many legs of dirty duck-trousers than anything else; pigsties are hard-by the cottages, either formed by the Cromlech stones of the Druids, or excavated like caves in the side of the hill.

Down on the beach where the rough old fishing-boats lie, the sand is entirely formed by countless multitudes of the tiniest fairylike shells, often as small as a pin's head, and all exquisitely tender in colour, and wonderfully varied in form. Up the lower and flatter parts of the hills above, fishing-nets are stretched to dry. While the traveller stops to look forth over the quiet simple scene, wild little children peep out in astonishment, and hardworking men and women greet him with a hearty Cornish salutation as he passes their cottage-doors.

He walks a few hundred yards inland, up the valley,