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altars maybe many of them "To the Unknown God." Monarchies, republics, systems have grown up, matured, vanished. Slaughter and battles have raged round them. Cruelties, intolerances, terrible superstitions, emotional outbursts of divers sorts have they seen since first they stood up mute, impassive, sphinx-like, facing high heaven. Through all those ages have they held their tongue. Silent then as now are they. They reveal no secrets, and the purport and lesson of their being is as insoluble as ever. The creeds, beliefs, aspirations which inspired their construction we know nothing about. We may grope, delve, theorise— we cannot explain, and I doubt if we shall ever be able to.

That the people who planned and built these monuments were superstitious is, I think, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Superstition was necessary for their inception. Superstition is probably a matter of degree and extent, not of past, for all men have in all ages possessed in varying degree a sympathy with the invisible; but the people who laboriously planned and erected these stone circles, huge menhirs, and mounds were certainly more superstitious than many of the other ancient peoples who have left little, if any, remains behind them. The early inherent superstition of the Celtic nations naturally crystallised into fervour when directed into Christian channels. In superstition always lies the possibility of religion, and the Celtic nations are certainly among the most deeply and honestly religious the world has ever seen. Whence came this most characteristic feature of Celtic civilisation? That is a question we can no more answer than we can that of the origin of this curiously vital and irrepressibly active branch of the human race.

About three-quarters of a mile due west of the Lanyon Quoit are the remains of another, known as Lower Lanyon Quoit. Two stones are all that now remain, the covering stone and one of the supporters-the others having been split up and carried away for building purposes.

The following notice of its discovery is given in the Archæologia, Vol. XIX, p. 228 (1803), in a letter from the Rev. Malachi Hitchins to the Rt. Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., K.B., P.R.S., and F.A.S. :

"This cromlêh was found a few years since by the following incident. The gentleman who owns the estate of Lalyon,

happening to be overtaken by a shower of rain in walking through his fields, took shelter behind a bank of earth and stones, and remarking that the earth was rich, he thought it might be useful for a compost. Accordingly he sent his servants soon after to carry it off, when, having removed near a hundred cart-loads, they observed the supporters of a cromlêh, from which the cover-stone was slipped off on the south side, but still leaning against them. These supporters include a rectangular space open only at the north end, their dimensions being of a very extraordinary size, viz. that forming the eastern side being ten feet and a half long, that on the west nine feet, with a small one added to complete the length of the other side, and the stone shutting up the south end about five feet wide. The cover-stone is about thirteen feet and a half by ten feet and a half; but its length and the height of the supporters cannot be exactly ascertained, as they are inserted in the ground, the present height being about five feet. This cromlêh is dissimilar to all others found in this county, which have small supporters, and the area under the cover-stone open on all sides; whereas this, when the cover was on, was shut up almost quite close at the top and on three sides, having only the entrance at the north end open, and therefore appears to resemble Kitts-Cotty-House in Kent, though the dimensions of this are larger. As soon as the gentleman observed it to be a cromlêh, he ordered his men to dig under it, where they soon found a broken urn with many ashes, and going deeper they took up about half of a skull, the thighbones and most of the other bones of a human body, lying in a promiscuous state and in such a disordered manner as fully proved that the grave had been opened before; and this is the more certain because the flat stones which formed the grave, or what Dr. Borlase calls the kist-vaen, i.e. stone chest, and a flat stone about six feet long, which probably lay at the bottom, had all been removed out of their places. The skull and some other bones were carried into the gentleman's house, and shown to his friends as curiosities, but were afterwards re-interred in the same spot inclosed in a box."

This account is interesting, because here was a cromlech actually covered by a mound of earth, and also

"DRUIDS' ALTARS"

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because the primary interment within the kist consisted of a single body unburnt. These two facts within historic knowledge are worthy of emphasis, since in the case of so few other similar monuments of prehistoric times is anything left but the bare stones, standing out of the level ground.

It seems to me clear that these cromlechs, at any rate, were associated with a peculiar species of sepulchre. The popular appellation of "Druids' altars" has been applied to them in ignorance of their real nature. A moment's reflection and the very remarkable similarity pervading all of these cromlechs in England, France, and the Channel Islands show their utter inapplicability to sacrificial purposes. Most, if not all, of them originally were covered deep with earth, and had a wall-or two walls-close around them, so that they were most certainly not adapted for spectacular functions. Graves are found beneath them and all round in their immediate vicinity. True, no doubt, it is that they possess an imposing solemnity. How few but have loved to rest near the venerable, grey-lichened inclined stone and cherished visions of the dimly remote age of their erection. The dreams of barbarous sacrifice and writhing victims, yelling multitudes and strange rites will not stand the searchlight of modern spade-work; the cold-water douche of our latest antiquarian knowledge. No place of religious human sacrifice was here. The observer of to-day stands where mourners once wept, where the last offerings and offices of affection had been bestowed and performed on departed relatives and friends, where the survivors had bewailed the common lot of all humanity in all ages alike, when they saw deposited in peace the mortal remains we now so ruthlessly disturb. Truly the dead are very many and the living few, and sorrow and tears the close, inseparable accompaniments of humanity then as now.

Cromlechs, dolmens, or quoits as they are variously called-are found, as I have said, in many other countries besides Britain. Even at the present day, for example, some of the hill tribes in India continue to erect menhirs, cromlechs, and gigantic stones, sometimes in rows, sometimes in circles, sometimes singly, in either case very closely resembling those similar structures found in Western

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Europe. Structures such as these are common to mankind. A child, no matter of what nationality, with its box of bricks starts straightway to build cromlechs, dolmens, Stonehenge and Boscawen circles. Jacob of old took a stone and set it up for a pillar (Gen. xxxi.), and in Mount Sinai Moses erected twelve pillars (Exod. XXIV. 4); and when the children of Israel had crossed over Jordan, Joshua took twelve stones and pitched them in Gilgal as a record for the time to come: When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come .. What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land" (Joshua Iv. 21, 22). So there is nothing strange in the fact of the presence of cromlechs in Cornwall. Probably all over the west end of England cromlechs were once quite common, but the inveterate tendencies of past ages and crass ignorance of the people have destroyed nearly all. Hence the apparent rarity of those we now possess.

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CHAPTER XXXIV

PORT ISAAC, ST. MINVER, AND PADSTOW

HE huddled hump of quaint old cottages forming Port Isaac, tumbling over one another in a cleft of precipices on the north coast of Cornwall, is worth seeing.

The London and South Western Railway runs direct to Padstow from Waterloo, and the traveller to Port Isaac can leave the train at Port Isaac Road Station, a few miles from the former seaport. The single third-class fare to Port Isaac Road is 20s. 3 d., the distance from London being 276 miles.

The trip I took was to Port Isaac Road, thence to the little fishing village Portyssik (vulgarly called by the Hebraic-looking title), and then on to Padstow by a trap, returning direct from the latter place to London, and a pleasant trip it was too, which I recommend others to follow.

I had not announced my intention of getting out at Port Isaac Road, and on arrival there was fortunate to find at the station a single vehicle. It was an old, small wagonette, drawn by an equally ancient white steed of uncertain date like the vehicle; the back part had two rough deal boards tied on across for luggage. I sat on the hind board, and so bumped into Port Isaac in due course.

One steep, very steep hill leads down from the cliff into Port Isaac, the quaint old houses and cottages arranged higgledy-piggledy, but most artistically and delightfully inconsequently, on either side. At the bottom is a flat pit, where the houses are more than ever squeezed up together, and where the faint attempts at streets and alleys are simply inimitably effective. Seaward the eye wanders along a little cove up which the surf moans and foams regularly according to its allotted times, until it licks the small array of fishing-boats nestling almost in the