[To face p. 110
Lytton seems to have had Tintagel, or a very similar place in the north, in his mind when he described the arrival of the Cymrian King, pursued by the Saxons, at a beach of far resounding seas where wave-hollowed caves arched, and
“Column and vault, and seaweed-dripping domes
Long vistas opening through the streets of dark,
Seem’d like a city’s skeleton, the homes
Of giant races vanish’d.”
This tract of land around Tintagel is crowded with memorials and with relics about which superstition has cast its web. The caer-camp at Trenail Bury, and the huge stone monuments which lie embedded in the earth, take us back to British times. The pools, looking black and weird among the hills, all have their legends, and the wells commemorate a multitude of saints known only to Cornwall. Castle-an-Dinas looms majestically at a height of nearly eight hundred feet against the horizon: here was King Arthur’s hunting ground, and the remains of the structure cresting the summit was his palace. The scenes of some of his hard-fought battles are the wide valleys closed in by the shadowy hills, and the crags dashed by the tumultuous sea. You may wander at will for miles in any direction still keeping in sight the sturdy granite church standing exposed on the highest bit of the coast; you will hear no sound but the whimpering cry of the gulls; and you will be free to reconstruct here in imagination the vanished realm of King Arthur, while the words of the old priest, Joseph Iscarus of Exeter, ring in your ears—
“From this blest place immortal Arthur sprung
Whose wondrous deeds shall be for ever sung,
Sweet music to the ear, sweet honey to the tongue.