ACROSS THE HARBOUR INTO CORNWALL.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume VIII, Issue 1, 1 April 1903, Page 19

ACROSS THE HARBOUR INTO CORNWALL.

A " stately home of England " will have greeted the eyes of our

cal drum, so that it need not be taken down yet awhile— God grant it never may. And, perhaps, too, we may be allowed to hold the ambition that when England's next time of stress and difficulty dawns, it may be New Zealand that shall be privileged to provide a British leader who, like Lord Eoberts and Kitchener, may supply his country's need, and still secure to old Francis Drake his well-earned rest ;; arid that the only sound to which the famous seaman

" Tongariro's " passengers as they first saw English land. On the slope of the hills, opposite which lies Plymouth town, stands— in the Comity of Cornwall— Mount Edgcumbe House, the seat of the Earls of Mount Edgcumbe, and its spacious grounds will be an early glimpse of Cornish land. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, Admiral of the Armada, when he first set eyes on Mount Edgcumbe, marked it as his share of the spoil when England should be conquered. Vain,

entrancing dream ! It and its rough awakening lying these many centuries behind us now. A more perfect type of old English mansion there could not be, and it is fortunate that such a fair home of England should stand where it does, to greet the eyes of so many of England's returning sons and daughters, and to be their first prospect of her inimitable grace and security ; and to beckon them westward, down into tlie heart of the delectable duchy, and thence on to that further fairyland of Lyonesse, where King Arthur, with his Round Table, held rule, and where the gallant Lancelot, Queen Guinevere, and the false Sir Modred dwelt.