brow of that mountain top there must be breath and room. We turned, therefore, to climb, and for once “vaulting ambition did not o’erleap itself.” Slow and difficult was the way, but cooler and more bracing the air every yard that we achieved. We stood at last on the brow of the vast gorge, and full five hundred feet above the sea, where church and tower crowned the cliff like a crest. The scene we looked upon was indeed exhilarating, stately, and grand. On the right hand, and to the west, arose and stood the craggy heights of Dundagel, island and main, ennobled by the legends of old historic time. To the left, a boundless reach of granite-sprinkled moor, where barrow, logan rock, and cromlech stood, the mute memorials of Keltic antiquity.[132] Beneath, and afar off, the sea, at that silent hour, like some boundless lake, “its glad waves murmuring all around the soul;” near, and at our feet, the jumbled village, crouching on either side of the steepy road, and clinging to its banks as if the inhabitants sought to secure access for escape when the earthquake should rend or the volcano pour. We prepared to return and descend; but this was by no means an easy feat, from the extreme angle at which the roadway fell. At the first look on the inclined plane it seemed easier to sit down and slide; but on the whole we thought it better to walk, and pause, and creep. Another and a new feature in the scene now met our gaze. Annexed to every human abode a small hut had been stuck on to the walls for the home of the “gentleman” that, in Cornwall as in Ireland, pays the rent--_Keltice_, the pig. The hovels of these bristly vassals, like the castles of their lords, were cabined and circumscribed in the extreme. There was just room enough to breathe, but not to snore without impediment of tone. A sudden inspiration awoke in our minds. Surely it would be an act of humanity and kindness to enable these poor suffocating creatures once in their lives to taste the balmy breath of a summer morning. It will be to us, we said and thought, a personal delight to see them emerge from their close and festering abodes and rush out in the free, soft radiance of the dawn! Action followed close on thought. Hastily, busily, every rude rough bar was drawn back, door and substitute for door unclosed; and a general jail-delivery of imprisoned swine was ruled and accomplished on the spot. Undetected by a single human witness, without interruption from slumbering master or lazy hind, the total deed was done. Gradually descending the hill, and scattering, like ancient heroes and modern patriots, freedom and deliverance as we went, never did the children of liberty so exult in their unshackled deliverance as these Boscastle hordes. There was one result, however, which we had not foreseen, and its perilous consequences had quite escaped anticipation. The inmates of every sty, as soon as their opportunities of egress had been ascertained