ROCKS NEAR THE LIZARD.
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT.
The western peninsula of Cornwall juts far out beyond Mount's Bay, which acquires its name from what is probably the most remarkable crag in all this wonderful region. This was the Iktis of the ancient geographers, an object so conspicuous as to attract attention in all ages. It is a mass of granite rising from the sands, covering about twenty-five acres, and the top of the church which crowns it is elevated two hundred and thirty-eight feet. It is impossible by either pen or pencil to give an adequate idea of St. Michael's Mount—of the shattered masses of the rock itself, its watch-turrets and batteries, the turf and sea-plants niched in its recesses, and the gray, lichen-covered towers that rise from the summit. Cornish tradition says that the giant Cormoran built the first fortress here; and he is one of those unfortunate giants whose fate is told under the name of Corincus in the veritable history of Jack the Giant-killer. The archangel St. Michael afterwards appeared to some hermits on its rocks, and this gave the mount its religious character and name. Milton has written of it in Lycidas:
"Or whether thou to our moist views denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old,
Where the great vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold."
It was always a strongly-defended place, and became a Benedictine monastery—at first as an offshoot of the greater abbey of St. Michael in Normandy, which in situation it resembles, and afterwards as an independent establishment. It was a stronghold as well as a religious house, however, and was notorious as the "back-door of rebellion," frequently besieged. The crowning square tower is that of the monastic church, and St. Michael's Chair is on the battlements—a stone beacon which is of great importance to all newly-married couples in that region, for it bestows the ascendency on the husband or wife who first sits in it. It is of this chair Southey's ballad about the adventurous Rebecca was written; and he tells that just as she was installed.
"Merrily, merrily rang the bells,
And out Rebecca was thrown."