We turn instinctively to Tennyson for the poetisation of this incident. No one has worked on the legends so wondrously as he, no one has added more to their moral significance or to their mysticism. His paraphrase of the prose of Malory, his additions to the details, and his glorification of the vision, rank among the greatest triumphs of his peculiar art. With what feelings is one likely to read his _Holy Grail_, and, standing near the broken and gleaming torrent of St. Knighton’s Kieve, try to imagine that the marvellous quest which ended in Sarras began at this spot? CHAPTER IX OF CAMELFORD AND THE LAST BATTLE “O’er Cornwall’s cliffs the tempest roar’d, High the screaming sea-mew soar’d; On Tintagel’s topmost tower Darksome fell the sheeting shower; Round the rough Castle shrilly sung The whirling blast, and wildly flung On each tall rampart’s thundering side The surges of the tumbling tide: When Arthur ranged his red cross ranks On conscious Camlan’s crimson banks.” WHARTON, _The Grave of King Arthur_. “On Trinitye Mondaye in the morne This sore battayle was doomed to be; Where many a knight cry’d ‘Well-a-waye!’ Alacke, it was the more pittie.” _Percy Reliques._ Sheer over the bleak Cornish hills, fifteen miles from Launceston, lies a small white-looking town with a precipitous highway along which the principal houses and one or two poor-looking public buildings are ranged. It is a town without a church, and, except on market day, without the signs of stirring life and business; a remote and isolated little place which nevertheless once had its own Parliamentary representative and not unfittingly chose “Ossian” Macpherson as its member. This is Camelford, and the ride by coach from Launceston is not uninteresting or uninstructive. The desolate aspect of the land, the poverty-stricken appearance of the few tiny villages passed on the way, the barrenness of the hills, the scantness of the population, all serve to reveal the history, past and present, of this portion of England where only the hardiest of the race could live, and live somewhat precariously. The land itself yields little; there are no rivers upon which a boat could be used, and the line of rough hills which form the spine of the county pent the people as within a prison. Even now, Camelford and half a score of like places seem shut out of the world. The stream of life is sluggish, luxuries are scarcely known, the habits of the villagers are primitive, and yet the Cornishmen retain that rugged independence for which they have at all times been noted. In old times the county produced a race of heroes and giants who preserved their liberties and were among the last to be subdued by English rulers. Both modern and ancient history, legends and facts, bear testimony to the constant struggle which prevailed in this part, and had there been no “giants” in Cornwall, neither its traditions nor its history would be what they are.