On our way from here to Lostwithiel, which my brother thought might have
been a suitable name for the place where we went astray last night, we
passed along Braddock or Broad-oak Moor, where in 1643, during the Civil
War, a battle was fought, in which Sir Ralph Hopton defeated the
Parliamentary Army and captured more than a thousand prisoners. Poetry
seemed to be rather at a discount in Cornwall, but we copied the
following lines relating to this preliminary battle:
When gallant Grenville stoutly stood
And stopped the gap up with his blood,
When Hopton led his Cornish band
Where the sly conqueror durst not stand.
We knew the Queen was nigh at hand.
We must confess we did not understand this; it could not have been
Spenser's "Faerie Queene," so we walked on to the Fairy Cross without
seeing either the Queen or the Fairy, although we were fortunate to find
what might be described as a Fairy Glen and to reach the old Castle of
Restormel, which had thus been heralded:
To the Loiterer, the Tourist, or the Antiquary: the ivy-covered ruins
of Restormel Castle will amply repay a visit, inasmuch as the remains
of its former grandeur must, by the very nature of things, induce
feelings of the highest and most dignified kind; they must force
contemplative thought, and compel respect for the works of our
forefathers and reverence for the work of the Creator's hand through
centuries of time.
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