I venture to give one specimen of Tobias Martin's poetry. "Awake, my soul! the night is past, The day begins to dawn, With eager footsteps let me haste To meet the rising sun. "But first to heaven's exalted throne A tribute let me pay, To Him who hath His mercies shewn, And sent another day. "To honest labour then inclined I'll hasten to the spot, With cheerful and contented mind, Where heaven hath cast my lot. "And there let me my daily task With busy hands pursue, And God's assistance humbly ask In all I have to do. "Though some despise my mean estate, I would not have it said I spend my time in sloth and hate, Nor earn my daily bread. "While idle wretches pine and starve, And nothing good will do, I'll labour on and try to serve God and my neighbour to." It would be unjust not to make mention in concluding this chapter of Joseph Boaden, who lived his whole life as a small cultivator in the parish of Breage, and who was laid to rest in Breage Churchyard in December, 1858. Self-taught, through his life he pursued the study of higher mathematics and astronomy, and was regarded as a valued correspondent by Professors Airy and Adams, of Cambridge. Under modern conditions education has become more diffused, but we look in vain for men of the type of those whom we have been considering. With its superficial diffusion knowledge has in a measure lost its prestige and fascination, and education has been in a sense debased and vulgarised in the popular mind into a mere instrument of livelihood. The successful passer of competitive examinations, under the system of cram, with no true love of knowledge for knowledge's sake in his heart, and who divests himself of his crapula of potted knowledge the moment a livelihood with a pension at the end has been attained, has already gone far to cast learning, so far as the popular mind is concerned, into the quagmire of contempt. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [58] "The Autobiography of a Smuggler," published by Messrs. Pollard, of Truro, 1894. [59] See Mr. Baring-Gould's "Cornish Characters and Strange Events" for many of the factors as given above. [60] "Cornish Characters and Strange Events." Local Place Names and Superstitions. CHAPTER IX.