This relic of antiquity is called Piran Round. It consists of a circular embankment, about ten feet high, sloping backwards, and cut into steps for seats or standing-places. This embankment encloses a level area of grassy ground, and stands in the middle of a flat, wild heath. A couple of thousand spectators could look down from the seats upon the grassy circus which formed a stage of more than a hundred feet in diameter. Here, in very early times, sports were played and combats fought out, and rustic councils assembled. The ancient Cornish Mysteries here drew tears and laughter from the mixed audiences of the day. They were popular as late as the period of Shakspeare. Of one of them, a five act piece, entitled "The Creation of the World, with Noah's Flood," the learned Davies Gilbert has given a translation. In this historical piece, played for edification in Scripture history, the stage directions speak of varied costumes, variety of scenery, and complicated machinery, all on an open-air stage, whereon the deluge was to roll its billows and the mimic world be lost. This cataclysm achieved, the depressed spectators were rendered merry. The minstrels piped, the audience rose and footed it, and then, having had their full of amusement, they who had converged, from so many starting points, upon Piran Round, scattered again on their several ways homeward from the ancient theatre, and as the sun went down, thinned away over the heath, the fishermen going seaward, the miners inland, and the agricultural labourers to the cottages and farm-houses which dotted, here and there, the otherwise dreary moor. Such is Piran Round described to have been, and the "old house" is worthy of tender preservation, for it once saved England from invasion! About the year 1600, "some strollers," as they are called in Somer's Tracts, were playing late at night at Piran. At the same time a party of Spaniards had landed with the intention of surprising, plundering, and burning the village. As the enemy were silently on their way to this consummation, the players, who were representing a battle, "struck up a loud alarum with drum and trumpet on the stage, which the enemy hearing, thought they were discovered, made some few idle shots, and so in a hurly-burly fled to their boats. And thus the townsmen were apprised of their danger, and delivered from it at the same time." Thus the players rescued the kingdom! Their sons and successors were not so happy in rescuing their King; but the powerful enemies of each suppressed both real and mimic kings. How they dealt with the monarchs of the stage, our prologue at an end, remains to be told. [Illustration: Mr. Garrick as Sir John Brute.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Professor Ward says: "The entrance-money was from the time of Pericles provided out of the public treasury." [2] Geoffrey was made Abbot of St. Albans in 1119. The play, of course, was many years earlier.