And fear nor Life nor Death,
                     Content when thy summons comes,
To doff the perishing garb of clay,
And soar on wings of the morning light to the noon
        of another day.

THOMASINE BONAVENTURE.

THE aspect of rural England, during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, must have
presented a strange and striking contrast, in the
eye of a traveller, to the agricultural scenery of
our own time. Thinly peopled—for the three
millions of our chief city now-a-days are in
excess of the total population of the whole land of
the Edwards and the Henrys—the inhabitants
occupied hamlets few and far between, and a
farm or grange signified usually a moated house
amid a cluster of cultivated fields, gathered
within fences from the surrounding forest or
wold, and gleaming in the distance with rich or
green enclosures, rescued from the wilderness,
to give "fodder to the cattle, and bread to
strengthen the heart of man." But the great
domains of the land, for the most part expanded
into woodland and marsh and moor, with glades
or grassy avenues here and there for access to
the lair of the red deer or the wild boar, or other
native game, which afforded in that day a
principal supply of human food. Yonder in the
distance appeared ever and anon a beacon tower,
which marked the place of watch and ward for
the warning of hostile advances by night, and
for the gathering rest of the hobbelars or horsemen,
whose office it was to scour the country
and to keep in awe the enemies of God and the
king. Wheel-roads, except in the neighbourhood
of cities, or on the line of a royal progress,
there were none, and among the bridle-paths
men urged their difficult path in companies, for
it was seldom safe for an honest or well-to-do-
man to travel alone. Rivers glided in silence
to the sea without a sail or an oar to ruffle their
waters, and there were whole regions, that now
are loud with populous life, that might then
have been called void places of the uninhabited
earth. But more especially did this character
of uncultured desolation pervade the extreme
borders of the west of England, the country
between the Tamar and the sea. There dwelt,
in scattered villages or town-places, as they are
called to this day, the bold and hardy Keltic
people, few in number, but, like the race of the
Eastern wild man, never taught to bear the
yoke. Long after other parts of England had
settled into an improved agriculture, and
submitted to the discipline of more civilised life,
the Cornish were wont to hew their resources
out of the bowels of their mother earth, or to
haul into their nets the native harvest of the
sea. Thus the merchandise of fish, tin, and
copper became the vaunted staple of their land.
These, the rich productions of their native
county, were even in remote periods of our
history, in perpetual request, and formed,
together with the wool of their moorland flocks,
the great trade of the Cornish people. From
all parts, and especially from that storied city
whose merchants were then, as now, princes of
the land, men were wont to encounter the perilous
journey from the Thames to the Tamar, to
pursue their traffic with the "underground folk,"
as they termed the inhabitants of Cornwall, that
rocky land of strangers, as when literally
interpreted is the exact meaning of its name.

It was in the year 1463, when Edward the
Fourth occupied the English throne, that a tall
and portly merchant, in the distinctive apparel
of the times, rode along the wilds of a Cornish
moor. He sat high and firm upon his horse, a
bony gelding, with demipique saddle. A broad
beaver, or, as it was then called, a Flanders hat,
shaded a grave and thoughtful countenance,
wherein shrewdness and good humour struggled
for the mastery, and the latter prevailed, and his
full brown beard was forked, a happy omen, as
it was always held, of prosperous life. His
riding garb displayed that contrast of colours
which was then so valued by native taste,
insomuch that the phrase "motley" had in its origin
a complimentary and not an invidious sound.
Behind him and near rode his servant, a stout
and active-looking knave, armed to the teeth.

The traveller had crossed the ford of a moorland
stream, when he halted and reined up at
a scene that greeted him on the bank. There,
on a green and rushy knoll and underneath a
gnarled and wind-swept tree, a damsel in the
blossom of youth stood leaning on her shepherd-
staff; her companion, a peasant boy, drew back,
half shaded by a rock. Sheep of the native
breed, the long- forgotten Cornish Knott,
gathered around. As he drew nigh, the
stranger discovered that the maiden was tall
and well formed, and that her rounded limbs had
the mould and movement of a natural grace that
only health and exercise could develop or
bestow. The sure evidence of her Keltic origin
was testified by her eyes of violet-blue and
abundant hair of rich and radiant brown—the hue
that Italian poets delight to describe as the
colour of the ripe chesnut, or the stalks and
fibres of the maidenhair fern. She had also the
bashful nose that appears to retreat from the lip
with the unmistakable curve of the Kelt. She was
clad in a grey kirtle of native wool,and her bodice
also was knitted at the hearth by homely hands.
The merchant was first to speak.

"Be not scared," said he, "fair damsel, by a
stranger's voice. My name is John Bunsby, of
the city of London, and I am bound for the
hostel of Wike St. Marie, which must be
somewhere nigh this moor. What did thy gossips
call thee, maiden, at the font?"

"My name, kind sir," she answered, modestly,
"is Thomasine Bonaventure, and my father's
house is hard by at Wike. These are my master's
sheep."

"The evening falls fast," said the traveller;
"I would fain hire safe guidance to yonder inn."

She beckoned to the youth, and whispered a
word in his ear, to which, however, he seemed
to listen with reluctance or dislike, and then,