FASCINATING BOOK ABOUT CORNWALL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23121, 20 August 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

FASCINATING BOOK ABOUT CORNWALL

QNE of the most fascinating of all the books in Mr. Arthur Mee's King's England series is the Cornwall volume, published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. In it we read of 250 villages and towns and see 173 pictures. A panorama of England's Farthest South, it is a thrilling account of all wo may see, and a story-book of the romantic past. Among its thousands of facts about Cornwall the book gives much curious information, and there is hardly a page without its surprise. How odd it is at Mylor to come upon tho epitaph of Joseph Grapp, who died in 1770: His foot, il slip and he did fall. " Help, help, he cried, and that was all. Who would think there could be in all England a church into which tho only entrance was at one time through tho roof? But Cornwall has at St. Enodoc a little church which is still nestling in the dunes, the sand for many years piling up so high that to keep the tithes tho parson and his clerk wont to service through the roof. Wo come to St. Just-in-Roseland, and hero, in the wonderful churchyard by the sea, visited by 80,000 people every year, are 146 kinds of polyanthus in company with bamboos and palms, myrtles, hydrangeas and-plants from 25 countries. Nor is this the only

stirpriso here, for on December 27 a funeral sermon is preached in the church in memory of Thomas Carlyori who died in 1733, and if Thomas has his wish another 800 sermons will bo preached for him, for it was his strango whim to have his name kept in mind for 1000 years. We pause a moment at Sonnen, Land's End's next-door neighbour, to think of the 87 men who went to fight in the war. Nineteen of them bore one name. At Towednack we look in the old church to see the bench-ends with portraits of church wardens in the broad-brimmed hats they wore in the 17th century. # _ Launceston has many rarities. There is the curious document printed on paper made from the web of the Sacred

Spider of Hongkong. There aro crumbs of.broad mndc for Napoleon's prisoners in Dartmoor. There are the huge volumes in which wonderful Mr. Wise preserved 1650 grasses and flowers gathered in Cornwall and Devon. At Colan we may see a brass, only about a foot square, on which an exceptionally clover craftsman has engraved 24 portraits showing Francis Bluet with his wife and their 22 children; and at Phillack we marvel ' to find that the Hockins have been rectors in three centuries. William Hockin was preaching there before Napoleon was born. After him came another William who preached 44 years, Frederick who preached 49 years, and Arthur who preached 20 years, the four covering in all 160 years.