Starboard the helm, friend, for we have now fetched nearly a mile _plus_ the bridge, and prepare to set thy foot for the first time on old Cornubia's shore, and make acquaintance with its inhabiters, a generous, independent liberty-loving race, who through the past centuries have "one and all" vigorously asserted their right to social and religious freedom. Yonder is Landulph church-tower peering up among the undulations of the shore,--this will be our first port of call, to visit the sanctuary nestling among the dwellings at its foot, and make note of sundry interesting associations--one specially unique--connected with it. We pull in our little craft, and having made fast to a place of safety among the seaweed-clad slaty ledges of rock, set off for our destination, and a few minutes' walk brings us to the door of the little edifice. On entering, the first thing that arrests attention, is the large number of carved bench-ends with which the nave and south aisle are furnished. Although under any conditions these architectural features are most attractive to the antiquary, as displaying in their sculptured imagery, direct witness of the art of past existences, the examples here found, for quality of workmanship, reflect not the purer glory of the Plantagenet workman, nor the lavish wealth of the earlier Tudor. Their shallower and comparatively unstudied work, points to the era just before that crowned Dowsing,--who in relation to the church was dubbed Defender of her Faith, but whose truer and more congenial title should have been Destructor of her Works,--by his ravages among the religious establishments, gave the final quietus to the fast-dying spirit of ecclesiastical art. But even apart from his relentless savagery, its chief incentive had almost disappeared, for men were then fast learning the easier faith of word-service alone, unallied with the older self-denying, and more tangible offering of deeds. The real and the painstaking had given place to the less troublesome and quicker wrought,--rich deep-cut cusp, vine-leaf, rose, and blazoned shield were succeeded by coarse rustic allegory, ill-shaped animals and birds, tasteless initials and dates, and confused heraldry, interspersed with heathen masks and grotesques, elbowing the cross and sacred monogram--the last dying speech and confession of the expiring Gothic. Here the symbolism of the Passion seems to have been the old carvers' favourite subject, occurring in the greatest profusion, variety, and minuteness of detail,--a pertinent example of the lowest form of religious teaching, the objective (even now a favourite with some), designed by its pictured symbolism to impress, and in its way instruct the unlettered mind, a poor apology for the nobler and more comprehensive study of the sacred text. One or two of the panels are however more noteworthy, as preserving a flickering of the antient beauty of design, and these find record in our sketch-book.