RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS.
LAMORNA COVE.
RAMBLES BEYOND RAILWAYS;
OR,
Notes in Cornwall taken A-Foot.
By WILKIE COLLINS,
AUTHOR OF
"ANTONINA," "THE WOMAN IN WHITE," ETC.
The Land's End, Cornwall.
NEW EDITION.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY: NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.
1861.
DEDICATED TO
THE COMPANION OF MY WALK THROUGH CORNWALL,
HENRY C. BRANDLING.
PREFACE
TO
THE PRESENT EDITION.
I visited Cornwall, for the first time, in the summer and autumn of1850; and in the winter of the same year, I wrote this book.
At that time, the title attached to these pages was strictly descriptiveof the state of the county, when my companion and I walked through it.But when, little more than a year afterwards, a second edition of thisvolume was called for, the all-conquering railway had invaded Cornwallin the interval, and had practically contradicted me on my owntitle-page.
To rechristen my work was out of the question—I should simply havedestroyed its individuality. Ladies may, and do, often change their[Pg x]names for the better; but books enjoy no such privilege. In thisembarrassing position, I ended by treating the ill-timed intrusion ofthe railway into my literary affairs, as a certain Abbé (who was also anauthor,) once treated the overthrow of the Swedish Constitution, in thereign of Gustavus the Third. Having written a profound work, to provethat the Constitution, as at that time settled, was secure from allpolitical accidents, the Abbé was surprised in his study, one day, bythe appearance of a gentleman, who disturbed him over the correction ofhis last proof-sheet. "Sir!" said the gentleman; "I have looked in toinform you that the Constitution has just been overthrown." To which theAbbé replied:—"Sir! they may overthrow the Constitution, but they can'toverthrow My Book"—and he quietly went on with his work.
On precisely similar principles, I quietly went on with myTitle-Page.
So much for the name of the book. For the book itself, as published in[Pg xi]its present form, I have a last word to say, before these prefatorylines come to an end.
Cornwall no longer offers the same comparatively untrodden road to theliterary traveller which it presented when I went there. Many writershave made the journey successfully, since my time. Mr. Walter White, inhis "Londoner's Walk to the Land's End," has followed me, and rivalledme, on my own ground. Mr. Murray has published "The Handb