The rain rained all the remainder of the afternoon, and winds blew, and evening mists eventually hid the dismal prospect. All the available literature of the hotel lay in railway-guides and directories, an old copy of the “Pickwick Papers,” and a copy of a new humorist, whose work I am not going to mention by title. We glanced at Dickens with little satisfaction. His humour has long gone threadbare; Pickwickian feasts do not divert nowadays; the spreads are not appetising; the cakes are stale; the ale flat. As for the new humorist, he gave us, as the Noo ’umor would have it, “the hump.” No man can read the Noo ’umor and yet retain his literary digestion unimpaired. It seems the distinguishing mark of this appalling novelty that its sentences be cut up into short sharp lengths, with an effort at smartness; more often, though, the result, instead of being smart, is merely silly.

But in authorship, even as in M.P.ship, there is, in these days, much queer company, for, mark you, we may have in these latter times our Stevenson, but also our Sullivan, of the dishonoured prize-ring; a Barrie, but, per contra, him whom we may call by analogy Monsieur de Londres, throttling Mr. Berry: these have each his place in the catalogue of the British Museum Library, and, title for title, they bulk the same, although the difference between them is the very considerable one existing between letters and pothooks. As for the Society of the Talking Shop at Westminister, are not ——12 and ——12 its admired and honoured members?

We found, too, some crumpled copies of local newspapers. Lord! how can any one on this God’s earth read such chronicles of small beer. But to whom had that stale copy of the Guardian belonged that we discovered behind the horsehair sofa? The Wreck found it with joy, for its bulk promised plenty reading; but he presently slung the thing into the coal-scuttle, with remarks uncomplimentary, to say the least of them, to that flatulent print.

“Divinity,” said he, “I can understand, and ordinary worldly matters I appreciate better still; but hang me if I can make much sense out of that abominable mixture of this and other worldliness that seems to be a printed corroboree by Fleet Street journalists masquerading in alb and crucible.”

“Chasuble, you mean, dear boy,” I remarked.

“No matter,” he replied, with the slanginess which I grieve to report; “they’re all the same price to me. Let’s go out.”

And we went.

The High Street was still noisily busy, and with the coming of night was brilliant with many lights. The rain, too, sputtered only fitfully, and so the open air stall-keepers hung out their wares again. This was not like Cornwall, to our thinking; it more nearly resembled the Edgware Road on a Saturday night, save that dissipation was not evident. The folk were orderly, as might be expected of the Cornish people, even on Saturday evening.

The Cornishman is imaginative, and deeply, emotionally, but unaffectedly religious. He is a Celt, and consequently he generally wears an air of gentle melancholy. Hospitality and warm-heartedness are also among his characteristics, as all who have journeyed much in Cornwall have occasion to know.

But although the Cornishman is so religiously disposed, Cornwall is by no means a stronghold of the Established Church; the Cornishman’s piety runs in the channel of Dissent, and in many lonely valleys, and frequently on wild moorlands, far from sight of other houses, you come upon his conventicles, built after the fashion of the houses that are represented in children’s first efforts at drawing, in what I may perhaps be allowed to term the “box-of-bricks” style of architecture.

These Bible Christian or Bryanite chapels, with their Wesleyan rivals, are numerous above those of all other sects, and are nearly all inexpressibly dreary in appearance. In the larger towns they are often of immense bulk, as witness the chapels of the various Wesleyan sects at Redruth, of a size larger beyond comparison with the parish church.

Not only is the Establishment weak in its hold on the people; it labours under the additional disadvantage of scanty revenues; rich livings are the exception rather than the rule in Cornwall. If you take up the “Clergy List,” and scan the values of Cornish livings, you will find them, in a very large proportion of cases, extremely meagre; the clerk in holy orders frequently not receiving so large a sum as the small stipend accorded his secular namesake of London city—poor clerk!

We did not remain at Redruth the following day (Sunday), but left the town shortly after breakfast, on our way westward. Carn Brea Hill loomed ahead beyond the works of the tin-streamers, and we made direct for it.