Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-09-12


N The island of Shalott.
r There are no towers to day in Camelot. A
i that the imaginative tourist sees is q win
l ing street lined with houses of grey ston
built down close to the roadway, with ga
a dens behind, but more in front, quaint q.
fashioned, interesting, picturesque ~oId-
way, but not suggestive OF " in their
A Knight in armor woIT ne life of courts.
a OF place. Enid az FIld look curiously out
| tinue OF whtteid elaine, and all that re-
a i''ie IN cou .J-handed women, would find
q ingmen "!mon with the wives of the work
> the DaF no live In the plain houses But
{ 10Y" .1ey fields still line the way into the
! N, and the little river, though sadly
, shrunken, still winds through it, and they
still have 'blue unclouued weather. there,
as can personally bear witness. And surely
| he must have but lame and feeble fancy
| who cannot see the fine old pictures CLEAN
| in the old frame.
Where knights May Have Prayed.
Il TOOK long walk in the dusk of de-
lightful evening through the meadows, fol-
lowing the wtndings of the river, to gray
church which stands solitary upon the green
summit of a hill. The Knights may have
said their prayers there as they sailed forth
in quest of chivalr1c adventure. 1 could not
find the island on which the ruins of the
castle of the Lady of Shalott ought to be dis
covered, covered with ivy. The river is not
anywhere, so far as could see, big enough
to hold an island. But further search would
no doubt have brought it into sight. And 1
could imagine we'll the flour gray walls and
four gray towers" and could see the funeral
barge of Elaine come floating down the
shining river. and on the highways the
knights come riding two and two.
Sometimes a troop of damsels GLAD.
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-haired page in crimson clad,
Went by to lowered Camelot.
1.-THE eve sees what it brings of seeng',
Every traveller knows how true that is.
No two people see alike. Between the
Camelot of Tennyson and the Cameford of
Baedeker what a significant difference! I
met a man at Boscastle who told me that in
his opinion Camelford was the worst old
hole he had ever been unfortunate enough
to stay in-"beastly stuffy place." he found
it. Either he had no eyes, or no tmagina-
tfon, or no Tennyson, or no dinner.
A Walk Beside, the Sea.
THE next notable stopping place in
King Arthurs country is Tintagel. We
took pony trap to Trebarwith, along by
the slate quarries, where the sea rolls IN
finely over beach without q pebble. The
great cliffs stand guard on the sides of Tre-
barwith strand. There is vast rock out in
the sea, around which gulls are flying. The
bases of the cliffs are black with mussel
shells.
Here we started in upon a walk beside the
sea, along the edge OF the steep cliffs. From
Trebarwith to Tintagel, from Tintagel to
the Rocky Valley, there is q winding path,
sometimes up and sometimes down; some-
times by the ocean and sometimes through
the meadows among the sheep. Most of it
easy enough, but here and there descending
the perpendicular face OF great bluff and |
climbing up again ON the other side. There
is nothing finer in England than this walk
along the cliff tops of the Cornish Sea. You |
get the breath OF the ocean in your face, and |
the wide reaches of it stretching on and ON |
westward toward America shine in your |
eyes, and the rocks are black and brown and |
red at your feet, and the green meadows are |
dotted with white focks, and always some |
where on the sky line there is the square |
tower of an ancient church.
SO you arrive at Tintgel, where, in the
story, Arthur was born, and where there are |
still the ruins of an old grim castle which
they call King Arthur's, part of it on the
with the round keep crown
Ing the cliff. and part of it on a broken
Island up which you climb along precip-
10Th" at Camelot, but at Tintagel "The Com
ing of Arthur" You sit upon a weather.
beaten stone of that old fortress and palac ce,
which the Knights did really live Uneven
Baedeker allows US to believe that-and
ook down into the chasm where in Merlin's
lay the wave OF fire rolled in bringing the
babe, and there read the sVory of the "Idylls
If the King" and you possess thereafter an
edition of Tennyson which nobody can buy
SnI, a. |
'ead with the blue sky and the blue water
n the wide margin, and the castle on the
rowning cliffs set in for illustration be-
tween the pages.
Past Picturesque Places.
AT Boscastle, where there is one of the
Lueerest little harbors In the world we took
he coach, and thus made the remainder of
Quincy through Cornwall and Devonshire,
which lasted nearly a week, included
Iovelly, the most picturesque place in Eng
and, and Lynton and Lynmouth, which
vould be most wonderful If Cloveily
ad never been discovered, and even beside
lovely are we'll worth a visit, and ended in |
ride of 20 miles from Lynmouth to Nine
cad through binding rain, which made
light seeing impossible, wrecked umbrellas, |
nd drenched all the adventurous tourists
Tho undertook it. dampening everything
ACcpV eOOu SPiiiOss |
Even in a rainstorm there is delight in
he top of coach. Nobody has seen En-
land who has not seen it from coach top.
he roads are hard and smooth, without a |
ut, without hump or puddle or q ditch,
nd wide enough for two great coaches,
riven four-in-hand, to pass. There are I
ighways in the widest part of Cornwall
nd among the moors of the Lorna Doone
ounty in Devon, which are as good as the
est avenue in Pittsburg. As for the worst /
the name of it is legion-its like 1
annot be found in English speaking lands
n this side the Atlantic ocean. I suppose
,ere is no thoroughfare on all this island
hich is not at least hundred times better
ian great many well settled streets in the d
asst End.
Though this, after all, is an encouraging '
.ct, not discouraging one, it means that
e are still growing. We are still unfinished. q
70 are still looking forward rather than Z
ack, and placing our golden age in the j
Iture, not in the past imperfection is an b
sential element of progress. Every coun.
y has the defects of its qualities. And
ere are compensations manifold about
wing in a town which grows too fast for its d
,od streets to keep up with it. Q
annnupp nrtn rp nrrrp 4,