a very bold guess." The "bold guess" of these, on Max Müller's own statement, "learned and conscientious savants, most people, I fancy, would prefer to the abstract, wordy, and highly metaphysical imagining of the subtle German brain.

Except as the stepping-stone to St. Michael's Mount, Marazion would never be visited. There can be no question that the view of the Mount from this place is sublime. It is one of the views of England. Weirdly pyramidal, and ruggedly uneven in outline, this steep mass of rock rises straight up from the sea as an island when the tide is high. And even when the causeway connects it with the mainland, it is still beautiful, a thing apart, solitary in its grandeur and noble in bearing. No wonder in the early ages A.D., the legends locate here the resting-place of the Archangel who has ever been considered the guardian of seafaring men. Spenser says:

"St. Michael's Mount, who does not know,

That wards the Western Coast."

Carew styles it, "Both land and island twice a day," and nearly every poet of note has more or less alluded to it. The Italian romance writers speak of it, and some antiquaries say it is the Mount Ocrinum of Ptolemy. St. Keyna paid a visit to the Mount, and her nephew St. Cadoc also, about 490. Edward the Confessor founded a priory of Benedictine monks there, and Robert, Earl of Moreton, made it a cell to the abbey of St. Michael in Normandy. About the time of Richard I it came into the hands of one Pomeroy, who fortified it. The St. Aubyn family purchased it about 1660.

The view from the summit of the Mount is extensive; as Stockdale (F. W. L. Stockdale, Excursions in the County of Cornwall, 1824) somewhat quaintly puts it:

"The prospects from the summit cannot fail to raise the most lively emotions, as the eye ranges over a vast range of the ocean, and which appears the more noble, when contrasted with the humble dwellings of the poor fishermen beneath." The comparison between the noble sea and humble dwellings of the poor fishermen, certainly original, is rather amusing.

CAMBRIDGE SATIRE

223

Everyone at some time or other visits St. Michael's Mount, and a mass of literature good, bad, and indifferent has been written on the historic pile. I should only weary my readers by adding to the mass.

"Years since, I climb'd Saint Michael

His Mount:-you'll all go there
Of course, and those who like'll
Sit in Saint Michael's Chair:
For there I saw, within a frame,

The pen-O heavens! the pen

With which a Duke had sign'd his name,
And other gentlemen."

In such light style does the great satirical poet of the Victorian era hit off, if not the salient features of St. Michael's Mount, at any rate the characteristics of most of the visitors thereto.

1 "Precious Stones" in Fly Leaves, C. S. Calverley.

THE

CHAPTER XXII

ROMANS IN CORNWALL

HERE is singularly little evidence of any real Roman occupation of Cornwall. In other counties of England, where it is known the Romans actively ruled, villas, camps, roads, stone coffins, tessellated pavements, and baths, etc., are found. Not so in Cornwall. Roman roads in Cornwall are conspicuous by their absence, and it is well known that the first duty of a Roman general on conquering a country was to make straight roads for the passage of troops. That there passed a road west of Exeter to Totnes we learn from Robert of Gloster (time of Henry III), when speaking of the four great Roman roads. There is also some slight evidence that a road ran as far as the River Fal, but we have no proof that any regular Roman road ran to Land's End. Indeed, I find Carew (1602) noticing the absence of Roman roads in Cornwall: "for highways, the Romans did not extend theirs so far."

Most likely the Roman galleys put into the ports of Penwith, and the Damnonii submitted to the invading legions without a contest, purchasing peace by a tribute, paid perhaps in tin ingots, while the officers, viewing the rugged nature of the coast, were not sufficiently attracted by the scenery to care to reside there.

Scenery, beautiful landscapes and seascapes in the simple, exquisite reality of nature, had little or no influence on the military-trained minds of the Romans. They certainly understood art, admired sculpture and cultivated sculptors. That was because they had an appreciation of art, not nature. Many a person in these days, too, loves to wander through picture gallery after picture gallery; will spend days and days walking miles amid the pictures of Antwerp, Florence, Dresden, Bruges, Madrid, and Rome, who would be absolutely bored by sitting quietly down