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There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so gingerly over the paving-stones, that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by, without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no winecellars. Well, well, Sir, no harm done, I hope! Go, draw the cork, tip the decanter; but when your great toe shall set you a roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the. pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See, how lightly he capers away again! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout? Hawthorne.

PILCHARDS.

PILCHARDS are to Cornwall what herrings are to Yarmouth, cotton to Manchester, pigs to Ireland, and coals to Newcastle. In fact, it is doubtful if the Cornish people would not perish by inches if pilchards became extinct. If any one wants to know what pilchards are to a town, let him visit St. Ives in a pilchard season. From one side to the other of it, in every corner, cottage, lane, loft, room, inn, chapel, and church thereof there is but one odor, and that is the reeking odor of pilchards! We retreated into the most promising hotel; but alas! the pilchards followed us with their perpetual and penetrating odor... We ordered roast beef, but fancied we dined off pilchards; we ordered brandy and water, but the pilchards had polluted the brandy: we went to bed at nine to avoid the pilchards, but they seemed to be under and over the bed, in the walls, in the bed-curtains, in the cupboards, and on the pillows.

At last I fell asleep; but I dreamed I was floating among a shoal of pilchards. They kept leaping upon me; and I believe I should have gone mad under the gathering, leaping, and loading of pilchards, if the "boots" had not just then knocked at my door, saying: "Seven o'clock, Sir, if you please!" I jumped up, thinking I had got away from the pilchards now, and dressed, and ran down to the beach for fresh air. More pilchards!

He

On the Hill of Love we saw a man walking steadily along a narrow path, on the highest ground overlooking the sea. had a peculiar abstracted look, and turned away from us, and often fixed his eye upon the sea, shading his brow with his

hand; then he would seem disappointed, and turned round and gazed harshly at us. We walked on.

Once more he came back, and scrutinised the far-spreading deep. "Ah!" said my friend, who was a feeling man and a father, “that man has sent a son to sea. I see how it is. You observe that boat yonder, that large boat; that very boat, I doubt not, conveys his son, perhaps to embark for Australia, perhaps for New Zealand. Well, the short and simple annals of the poor are as full of feeling and sorrow at parting, as the annals of people like ourselves... Who would have thought that weepings and wailings took place last night in some one of those queer cottages below! A mother's heart was half broken, sisters were shedding hot tears, brothers dropped one or two boyish tears; and that father there,—you see the man cannot weep, his grief is too deep for tears, yet he seems to brush his brow occasionally... Don't interrupt the poor fisherman's grief; it is sacred. Under that rough exterior there beats, I doubt not, as warm and tender a heart as under the most polished exterior... How eagerly does the man stare into that boat! He appears to fix his eye on the son in it. Look at the man! he is making a sign; he is waving his great shawl-handkerchief. Look at the boat! there is the son answering him by signs. Ah! I should like to know the history of that father and son."

I was not held back by the same reverence as my friend for private sorrow, and therefore I went up to the man, the father, who indeed was so absorbed in his grief that he scarcely heeded my approach. I stood by him as he strained his eye and shaded his brow, and watched the boat as if he would fly to it or follow it, or perish in the attempt... I soon felt a little awe of him, for he was a big fellow, and seemed very doubtful and uncertain in his moodiness; but I would have the history of the son and the parting for my note-book; so as soon as he turned his eye off the sea and met mine, I ventured to address him. "Excuse me, my good man, excuse my intrusion upon yonr private sorrow, but both I and my friend there deeply sympathise with your evident grief. We conjecture that you have a son in that boat, going abroad. Will you tell us whither? The big man looked at me with a peculiar mazed glance. Again I repeated the latter part of my question; when at length he broke silence, and roughly exclaimed: "I don't know what you mean, Sir" "Well," said I, 66 we know we have no right to intrude upon your private and paternal feelings; but that is your son you are gazing at so earnestly on the sea, is it not?"... "My son, Sir? I don't

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know what you mean, Sir," answered the man again..." Who or what, then, are you looking for so fixedly on the ocean? "Looking for, Sir? why, for pilchards!" "For what? cried my friend, who did not catch the answer. "For pilchards!" repeated I; "for pilchards!" Whereupon our hearty laughter amazed the man as much as my previous questions.

This big man was a huer. Every fishing town and village commissions one or more huers on the heights above sea, when the pilchards are expected to come in. Such men are termed huers, from the old French word huer, to give an alarm; and hence perhaps the word hue in “hue and cry.”

The huer stands where he can command an uninterrupted view of the sea, some days before the pilchards are expected to appear; and at the same time boats, nets, and men are all ready. The first thing which the huer looks for is the discoloring of the sea, described to me as if it were a leaden cloud just under the surface. This discoloring then nears the shore, shifting and changing its hue and limits; for it is caused by the presence of the shoal of pilchards... Soon the pilchards can be seen leaping and playing on the surface in increasing numbers, and they will perhaps approach the shore so closely that they can be caught in shallow water; seldom in more than fifty or sixty feet water.

The huer on Love Cliff was employed in this very look-out when we saw him. As soon as such a man discerns the coming and clouding shoal, he waves a handkerchief or branch of a tree, and men and boys near him convey the same signal to the beach... The seine boat and another small boat have been rowed out to act under his directions. All eyes are fixed on the huer, who stands solemn and watchful, shading his brow with one hand, and waving his signal-branch with the other... The shoal of fish begin to press on, thousands upon thousands; the dark leaden cloud becomes a silvery, scaly, glancing cloud. When the shoal is fully within the shallow water, which the local huer knows full well, and when the fish begin to settle and to crowd closer and closer, then the huer gives the last decisive wave ... Previously, he had waved left or right as the shoal shifted, that the seine boat might follow it: now he waves straight downward, and thereon the seine (net) is shot overboard as speedily as possible. The lead sinks the seine at one end vertically toward the ground, while the floats buoy up the other end on the surface ... When it has been carried all round the fish, the two extremities are made fast, and the shoal is then imprisoned within an oblong barrier of net-work,

much practical skill being required in preventing more than a few of the pilchards from escaping... The scene on shore and sea, as the fish are being hauled to the surface, rises to a prodigious pitch of excitement. The merchants to whom the boats and nets belong, and by whom the men are employed, join the "huer" on the cliff: all their friends follow them; boys shout, dogs bark madly; every little boat in the place pulls off, crammed with idle spectators; old men and women hobble down to the beach to await the news. The noise, the bustle, and the agitation increase every moment. Soon the shrill cheering cry of the boys is joined by the deep cries of the "seiners."

There they stand, six or eight stalwart sunburnt fellows ranged in a row in the "seine" boat, hauling with all their might at the tuck-net, and roaring the regular nautical "Yoheave-oh!" in chorus...Higher and higher rises the net, louder and louder shout the boys and the idlers. The merchant forgets his dignity, and joins them; the huer, so calm and collected hitherto, loses his self-possession, and waves his cap triumphantly ... Even you and I, reader, uninitiated spectators though we are, catch the infection, and cheer away with the rest, as if our breath depended on the effect of the next few minutes! "Hooray! hooray-Yo hoy-hoy-hoy! Pull away boys! here she comes! here they are! here they are!" The water boils and eddies; the tuck net rises to the surface, one teeming convulsed mass of shining, glancing, silvery scales; and one compact crowd of thousands of fish, each one of which is madly endeavouring to escape, appears in an instant.

The noise before was as nothing compared with this noise now. Boats as large as barges are pulled up in hot haste all round the net; baskets are forwarded by dozens; the fish are dipped up in them and shot out, like coals out of a sack, into the boats... Ere long the men are up to their ankles in pilchards; they jump upon the rowing benches and work on, until the boats are filled with fish as full as they can hold, and the gunwales are within two or three inches of the water. Even yet the haul is not yet exhausted; the tuck net must be again let down, and left ready for a last haul, while the boats are strongly propelled to the shore, where we must join them without delay.

As soon as the fish are brought to land, one set of men, having capacious wooden shovels, spring in among them; and another set bring large hand-barrows close to the side of the boat, into which the pilchards are thrown with amazing rapidity. This operation proceeds without ceasing for a moment.

As soon as one barrow is ready to be carried to the saltinghouse, another is waiting to be filled.

When this labor is performed by night, which is often the case, the scene becomes doubly picturesque. The men with the shovels standing up to their knees in pilchards, working energetically; the crowd stretching down from the saltinghouse across the beach, and hemming in the boat all around; the uninterrupted process of men hurrying backwards and forwards with their barrows, through a narrow way, kept clear for them in the throng; the glare of the lanterns giving light to the workmen, and throwing red flashes on the fish as they fly incessantly from the shovel over the side of the boat; all together combine such a series of striking contrasts, such a moving picture of bustle and animation, as not even the most careless of spectators could ever forget.

Cornwall: Mines and Miners.

CIVILISATION: WHAT IS IT?

THE term civilisation has been used for a long period of time, and in many countries: ideas more or less limited, more or less comprehensive, are attached to it, but still it is adopted and understood. It is the sense of this word, the general, human, and popular sense, that we must study. There is almost always more truth in the usual acceptation of general terms, than in the apparently more precise and hard definitions of science. Common sense has given to words their ordinary signification, and common sense is the genius of mankind.

I shall describe a certain number of states of society, and then we may see if common instinct can point out the civilised state of society, the state which exemplifies the meaning that mankind naturally attaches to the term civilisation.

Suppose a people whose external life is pleasant and easy; they pay few taxes, they have no hardships; justice is well administered in all private relations; in a word, material_existence, taken as a whole, is well and happily regulated. But at the same time the intellectual and moral existence of this people is carefully kept in a state of torpor and sluggishness – I do not say, of oppression, because that feeling does not exist among them, but of compression. This state of things is not without example. There have been a great number of small aristocratic republics where the people have been thus treated like flocks, well attended and corporeally happy, but without

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