Impressions and Comments | Page 7

nature, that for all their calm
stolidity may give out a fiery ring if struck, and will fearlessly follow
the lure of Adventure or of Right. On the other hand, a race of soft and
flexible build, of shifting and elusive mind, alert to speak and slow to
act, of rainbow temperament, fascinating and uncertain. Other types
there may be, but certainly these two, whatever their racial origin,
Children of the Granite and Children of the Mist. October 3.--It has
often interested me to observe how a nation of ancient civilisation
differs from a nation of new civilisation by what may be called the
ennoblement of its lower classes. Among new peoples the lower
classes--whatever fine qualities they may possess--are still barbarians,
if not savages. Plebeian is written all over them, in their vulgar
roughly-moulded faces, in their awkward movements, in their manners,
in their servility or in their insolence. But among the peoples of
age-long culture, that culture has had time to enter the blood of even
the lowest social classes, so that the very beggars may sometimes be
fine gentlemen. The features become firmly or delicately moulded, the
movements graceful, the manners as gracious; there is an instinctive
courtesy and ease, as of equal to equal, even when addressing a social
superior. One has only to think of the contrast between Poland and
Russia, between Spain and Germany.
I am frequently reminded of that difference here in Cornwall.
Anywhere in Cornwall you may see a carter, a miner, a fisherman, a
bricklayer, who with the high distinction of his finely cast face, the
mingling in his manner of easy nonchalance and old-world courtesy,

seems only to need a visit to the tailor to add dignity to a Pall Mall club.
No doubt England is not a new country, and the English lower social
classes have become in a definite degree more aristocratic than those of
Russia or even Germany. But the forefathers of the Cornish were
civilised when we English were a horde of savages. One may still find
humble families with ancient surnames living in the same spot as lived,
we find, if we consult the Heralds' Visitations, armigerous families of
the same name in the sixteenth century, already ancient, and perhaps
bearing, it is curious to note, the same Christian names as the family
which has forgotten them bears to-day.
So it is that in that innate ennoblement which implies no superiority
either of the intellect or of the heart, but merely a greater refinement of
the nervous tissue, the Cornish have displayed, from the earliest period
we can discern, a slight superiority over us English. Drake, a man of
this district if not a Cornish-man, when sailing on his daring
buccaneering adventures, dined and supped to the music of violins, a
refinement which even his Pole-hunting successors of our own day
scarcely achieved. Raleigh, partly a Cornishman, still retains popular
fame as the man who flung his rich cloak in the mud for the Queen to
step on. To-day a poet of Cornish race when introduced in public to
Sarah Bernhardt, the goddess of his youthful adoration, at once kissed
her hand and declared to her that that was the moment he had all his life
been looking for. But we English are not descended from the men who
wrote the _Mabinogian_; our hearts and souls are expressed in Beowulf
and Havelok, and more remotely in the Chanson de Roland. We could
not imitate the Cornish if we would; and sometimes, perhaps, we would
not if we could.
October 4.--I lay with a book on the rocks, overlooking a familiar scene,
the great expanse of the sands at low tide. In the far distance near the
river was a dim feminine figure in a long coat, accompanied by three
dogs. Half an hour later, when I glanced up from my book, I chanced to
notice that the slender feminine figure was marching down to the sea,
leaving a little pile of garments on the middle of the sands, just now
completely deserted. The slender figure leisurely and joyously
disported itself in the water. Then at length it returned to the little pile,

negligently guarded by the dogs, there was a faint radiance of flesh, a
white towel flashed swiftly to and fro for a few moments. Then with
amazing celerity the figure had resumed its original appearance, and,
decorously proceeding shorewards, disappeared among the sand dunes
on the way to its unknown home.
In an age when savagery has passed and civilisation has not arrived, it
is only by stealth, at rare moments, that the human form may emerge
from the prison house of its garments, it is only from afar that the
radiance of its beauty--if beauty is still left to it--may faintly flash
before us.