The last thing before retiring, we had glanced out on a gloomy sea, a starless sky, pitch darkness, broken only by those moving lights on St. Michael's Mount, and thought anxiously of the morrow. It would be hard, if after journeying thus far and looking forward to it so many years, the day on which we went to the Land's End should turn out a wet day! Still "hope on, hope ever," as we used to write in our copy-books. Some of us, I think, still go on writing it in empty air, and will do so till the hand is dust.  
It was with a feeling almost of solemnity that we woke and looked out on the dawn, grey and misty², but still not wet. To be just on the point of gaining the wish of a life-time, however small, is a fact rare enough to have a certain pathos³ in it. We slept again, and trusted for the best, which by breakfast-time really came, in flickering⁴ sun-gleams, and bits of hopeful blue sky. We wondered for the last time, as we had wondered for half a century, "what the Land's End would be like," and then started, rather thoughtful than merry, to find out the truth of the case.
 
Glad as we were to have for our expedition this quiet Sunday instead of a tumultuous week day, conscience smote⁵ us in driving through Penzance, with the church-bells ringing, and the people streaming along to morning service, all in their Sunday best. Perhaps we might manage to go to afternoon church at Sennen, or St. Sennen's, which we knew by report, as the long-deceased father of a family we were acquainted with had been curate there early in the century, and we had promised faithfully "just to go and look at the old place."
 
But one can keep Sunday sometimes even outside church-doors. I shall never forget the Sabbatic peace of that day; those lonely and lovely roads, first rich with the big trees and plentiful⁶ vegetation about Penzance, then gradually growing barer and barer as we drove along the high promontory⁷ which forms the extreme point westward⁸ of our island. The way along which so many tourist-laden vehicles pass daily was now all solitary⁹; we scarcely saw a soul, except perhaps a labourer leaning over a gate in his decent Sunday clothes, or two or three children trotting¹⁰ to school or church, with their books under their arms. Unquestionably Cornwall is a respectable, sober-minded county; religious-minded too, whether Methodist, Quaker, or other nonconformist sects¹¹, of which there are a good many, or decent, conservative Church of England.
 
We passed St. Buryan's—a curious old church founded on the place where an Irishwoman, Saint Buriana, is said to have made her hermitage. A few stray cottages comprised the whole village. There was nothing special to see, except to drink in the general atmosphere of peace and sunshine and solitude¹², till we came to Treryn, the nearest point to the celebrated¹³ Logan or rocking-stone.
 
From childhood we had read about it; the most remarkable¹⁴ specimen¹⁵ in England of those very remarkable stones, whether natural or artificial, who can decide?
 
"Which the touch of a finger alone sets moving,
But all earth's powers cannot shake from their base."
Not quite true, this; since in 1824 a rash and foolish Lieutenant¹⁶ Goldsmith (let his name be gibbeted for ever!) did come with a boat's crew, and by main force remove the Logan a few inches from the point on which it rests. Indignant justice very properly compelled him, at great labour and pains, to put it back again, but it has never rocked properly since.
 
By Charles's advice we took a guide, a solemn-looking youth, who stalked silently ahead of us along the "hedges," which, as at the Lizard¹⁷, furnished the regular path across the fields coastwards. Soon the gleaming circle of sea again flashed upon us, from behind a labyrinth¹⁸ of rocks, whence we met a couple of tourists returning.
 
"You'll find it a pretty stiff climb to the Logan, ladies," said one of them in answer to a question.
 
And so we should have done, indeed, had not our guide's hand been much readier than his tongue. I, at least, should never have got even so far as that little rock-nest where I located myself—a somewhat anxious-minded old hen—and watched my chickens climb triumphantly¹⁹ that enormous mass of stone which we understood to be the Logan.
 
"Now, watch it rock!" they shouted across the dead stillness, the lovely solitude of sky and sea. And I suppose it did rock, but must honestly confess I could not see it stir a single inch.
 
However, it was a big stone, a very big stone, and the stones around it were equally huge and most picturesquely²⁰ thrown together. Also—delightful to my young folks!—they furnished the most adventurous²¹ scramble²² that heart could desire. I alone felt a certain relief when we were all again on smooth ground, with no legs or arms broken.
 
The cliff-walk between the Logan and the Land's End is said to be one of the finest in England for coast scenery. Treryn or Treen Dinas, Pardeneck Point, and Tol Pedn Penwith had been named as places we ought to see, but this was impracticable. We had to content ourselves with a dull inland road, across a country gradually getting more barren and ugly, till we found ourselves suddenly at what seemed the back-yard of a village public-house, where two or three lounging stable-men came forward to the carriage, and Charles jumped down from his box.
 
"You can get out now, ladies. This is the Land's End."
 
"Oh!"
 
I forbear to translate the world of meaning implied in that brief exclamation²³.
 
"Let us go in and get something. Perhaps we shall admire the place more when we have ceased to be hungry."
 
The words of wisdom were listened to; and we spent our first quarter of an hour at the Land's End in attacking a skeleton "remain" of not too daintily-cooked beef, and a cavernous cheese, in a tiny back parlour of the—let me give it its right name—First and Last Inn, of Great Britain.
 
"We never provide for Sunday," said the waitress, responding to a sympathetic question on the difficulty it must be to get food here. "It's very seldom any tourists come on a Sunday."
 
At which we felt altogether humbled²⁴; but in a few minutes more our contrition²⁵ passed into sovereign content.
 
We went out of doors, upon the narrow green plateau in front of the house, and then we recognised where we were—standing²⁶ at the extreme end of a peninsula, with a long line of rocks running out still further into the sea. That "great and wide sea, wherein are moving things innumerable," the mysterious sea "kept in the hollow of His hand," who is Infinity²⁷, and looking at which, in the intense solitude and silence, one seems dimly to guess at what Infinity may be. Any one who wishes to go to church for once in the Great Temple which His hands have builded, should spend a Sunday at the Land's End.
 
At first, our thought had been, What in the world shall we do here for two mortal hours! Now, we wished we had had two whole days. A sunset, a sunrise, a star-lit night, what would they not have been in this grand lonely place—almost as lonely as a ship at sea? It would be next best to finding ourselves in the middle of the Atlantic.
 
But this bliss²⁸ could not be; so we proceeded to make the best of what we had. The bright day was darkening, and a soft greyness began to creep over land and sea. No, not soft, that is the very last adjective applicable to the Land's End. Even on that calm day there was a fresh wind—there must be always wind—and the air felt sharper and more salt than any sea-air I ever knew. Stimulating²⁹ too, so that one's nerves were strung to the highest pitch of excitement. We felt able to do anything, without fear and without fatigue³⁰. So that when a guide came forward—a regular man-of-war's-man he looked—we at once resolved to adventure along the line of rocks, seaward, "out as far as anybody was accustomed to go."
 
"Ay, ay; I'll take you, ladies. That is—the young ladies might go—but you—" eying me over with his keen sailor's glance, full of honesty and good humour, "you............