As an Antiquary, few Gentlemen possessed a higher claim to notice than the late Samuel Lysons, Esq., F. A. S.; and the Author cannot but participate in the feelings which exist with every one who knew him; especially in deploring the great loss the country has sustained by his lamented death. In concluding, the Author begs to return his grateful acknowledgments to those Noblemen and Gentlemen who have been pleased to subscribe to the work; and takes the liberty of stating, that he is now engaged in completing a similar one, relative to the County of Devonshire, which he hopes will also meet their approbation. LONDON, MAY 1, 1824. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ EXCURSIONS THROUGH CORNWALL. ------- Cornwall is the most western county in England, and is almost wholly surrounded by the sea, excepting the eastern side, which is partly separated from Devonshire by the Tamar river. The greatest length of the county from Moorwinstow to the Land’s End, is nearly 90 miles; but its greatest breadth from Moorwinstow on the north, to Ram Head on the south, does not exceed 43 miles, and diminishes gradually till it is only, from Mount’s Bay to St. Ives, little more than seven miles. Its form, therefore, nearly resembles a horn, or as some historians term it, a cornucopia.—The surface of the county being extremely difficult to compute, owing to the many promontories and juttings on the coast, is stated at about 210 miles, containing 758,484 acres, but is supposed to have been much larger in former times. According to the works of the most respectable historians, the original name of Cornwall was CERWYN, and so called from its peculiar shape. The antient inhabitants were also called _Carnibii_, or _Cerwyn and Gwyr_, or Men of the Promontory; but after the Roman invasion, that name is supposed by _Borlase_, to have been latinized into _Cornubia_, which it retained till the Saxons imposed the name of _Weales_ on the Britons driven by them west of the rivers Severn and Dee, calling their county in the Latin tongue, _Wallia_; after which, finding the Britons had retreated not only into Wales, but into the more western extremities of the island, the Latinists changed Cornubia into Cornwallia; a name not only expressive of the many natural promontories of the county, but also that the inhabitants were Britons of the same nation and descent as those of Wales; and from this Cornwallia, the name of Cornwall is derived. The population of the county, according to the returns of 1811, was 216,667, and 28,398 greater than it was 10 years previous; but by the late census, amounts to 261,000, the extraordinary increase of about 45,000 in the last 10 years.—It is divided into nine hundreds, 203 parishes, (of which 85 are Rectories, 100 Vicarages, and 18 Curacies,) 30 market towns, and now returns _forty-two_ members to Parliament.