From the London Keepsake for 1832

Circumstantial Evidence

A Tale

by G. P. R. James Esq.

In the reign of an ancient king of Great Britain, whose name was George, and who consequently is supposed to have flourished on this side, both of the Conquest by the Norman William and the Reformation of our Church, under the renowned British Bluebird, Henry the Wifekiller; and about the period at which the British stage coach first sprung into existence, under the form and condition of a snail, and the title of a diligence, there appeared, by the highway, which ran along the southern coast of England, and led to that spot with an awful name, still called the Dand’s End,—a solitary public house, with a little circular piece of ground before it, and an apple orchard thickly planted with trees behind it: beyond which, again, was a place called The Garden; though, it must be acknowledged, that those who did call it so were very courteous and liberal in their epithets. Everyone who has seen Mount Edgecumbe knows well that the most luxuriant vegetation of which it is possible to imagine, can be produced at the very verge of old ocean’s reign: but no such pains as are there bestowed had been given the vegetable kingdom of the garden of which I speak, and a scanty array of cabbages, turnips, and carrots, was all that the spot of ground could boast. Even that was looked upon in those days all but miraculous, considering that the garden crept to the very edge of the cliff which overhung the sea; and Neptune, as if indignant at the presumption of the thing, would come angrily up to the very bottom of the bank at high water during all seasons of the year, but, when he got choleric in the spring and autumn, would bestow a buffet with his trident upon the cliff itself,… Read More