"I don't suppose it makes much difference to a fellow where he's born, but I'd like a more cheerful place to live in," said Guy, throwing himself on the turf, and pulling his hat over his eyes.
A stiff climb up slippery stone steps, with samphire growing perilously near, brought us to the "fortress," and what there was in stone suggested little by way of poetry or romance. Guy had made up his mind beforehand to see something quite different—Tintern Abbey, or Warwick Castle, or something. But this! As he couldn't see what he wished for, he would see nothing; so tilted his hat over his eyes to keep off the sun and hide disappointment. We left him where he lay, and rambled.
A fine bit of rock scenery, even in Cornwall, and worth looking at, is this. If there had only been a tempest, and all the elements at war, their chorus of thunders drowning the sea-birds' cries! But to-day it was sunshine and peace, and nothing to tell of war but sharp-pointed rocks and landslips and slides telling their own tale, writ large.
"This is the very place in which Arthur should have been born," said the Bookworm, when Guy, tired of his own discontent, joined us.
"I don't see any reason for it," said Guy.
"No! When Arthur first opened his eyes upon this rock, what impression do you think he received? This was a fit cradle for great things in a great mind, and this man was great."
"Never lived at all, perhaps."
"I don't care. This was a fit cradle for an allegory of war between What Is and What Should be, and Arthur is as the light shining in darkness."
"Have it your own way," said Guy; "but wouldn't some other place do just as well?"
"Quite, if the first impressions of the newly born were of eternal struggle. Arthur was born for the world, and not for a parish."