"Our vicar dug them up from under the flooring and turned them into pews. There was a gentleman here the other day who said there was nothing like them in all England."
Most curious, in truth, they were, and suited well the fine old building—a specimen of how carefully and lavishly our forefathers built "for God." We, who build for ourselves, are rather surprised to find in out-of-the-way nooks like this, churches that in size and adornment must have cost years upon years of loving labour as well as money.
It was pleasant to know that the present incumbent, a man of archæological tastes, appreciated his blessings, and took the utmost care of his beautiful old church. Success to him! even though he cannot boast the power of his predecessor, the Reverend Thomas Flavel, who died in 1682, and whose monument in the chancel really expresses the sentiments—in epitaph—of the period:
"Earth, take thine earth; my sin, let Satan have it;
The world my goods; my soul my God who gave it.
For from these four, Earth, Satan, World, and God,
My flesh, my sin, my goods, my soul, I had."
But it does not mention that the reverend gentleman was the best ghost-layer in all England, and that when he died his ghost also required to be laid, by a brother clergyman, in a spot on the down still pointed out by the people of Mullion, who, being noted for extreme longevity, have passed down this tradition from generation to generation, with an earnest credulity that we of more enlightened counties can hardly understand.
From Mullion we went on to Gunwalloe. Its church, "small and old," as Charles had depreciatingly said, had been so painfully "restored," and looked so bran-new and uninteresting that we contented ourselves with a distant look. It was close to the sea—probably built on the very spot where its pious founder had been cast ashore. The one curious point about it was the detached belfry, some yards distant from the church itself. It sat alone in a little cove, down which a sluggish river crawled quietly seaward. A sweet quiet place, but haunted, as usual, by tales of cruel shipwrecks—of sailors huddled for hours on a bit of rock just above the waves, till a boat could put out and save the few survivors; of sea treasures continually washed ashore from lost ships—Indian corn, coffee, timber, dollars—many are still found in the sand after a storm. And one treasure more, of which the recollection is still kept at Gunwalloe, "a little dead baby in its cap and night-gown, with a necklace of coral beads."
After this our road turned inland. Our good horse, with the dogged persistency of Cornish horses and Cornish men, plodded on mile after mile. Sometimes for an hour or more we did not meet a living soul; then we came upon a stray labourer, or passed through a village where healthy-looking children, big-eyed, brown-faced, and dirty-handed, picturesque if not pretty, stared at us from cottage doors, or from the gates of cottage gardens full of flowers and apples.
Those apples! They were a picture. Hungry and thirsty, we could not resist them. After passing several trees, hung thickly with delicious fruit, we attacked the owner of one of them, a comely young woman, with a baby in her arms and another at her gown.
"Oh yes, ma'am, you may have as many apples as you like, if your young ladies will go and get them."
And while they did it, she stood talking by the carriage door, pouring out to me her whole domestic history with a simple frankness worthy of the golden age.