Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Vol. 1 by Bottrell William

Author:Bottrell, William [Bottrell, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Global Grey
Published: 2015-05-11T23:00:00+00:00

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Sketches In Penzance

The Old Market-House, And Its Surroundings

"Dim, dream-like forms! Your shadowy train

Around me gathers once again.

The same as in life's morning hour,

Before my troubled gaze you pass’d:

Oh! this time shall I have the poor—

Shall I essay to hold you fast?

Forms known in happy days you bring,

And much-loved shades amid you spring

Like a tradition—half expired,

Worn out with many a passing year.

First Love comes forth—so oft desired,

With half-forgotten Friendship near.

And, voiced with Sorrow's tone, they bid

The pangs of parted years renew;

All that life's mazy path has hid

Again they call me to pursue.

Those dear ones’ names I hear repeated,

As shades of sorrow round me rise,

When fortune of fair hours has cheated,

All early vanished from mine eyes.

The present hour, each present thing,

All that I now around me see,

Into the distance seem to wing—

But all the past and vanish’d, spring

Back into clear reality!"—

Goethe's Faust (Herschel's translation).

The Old Market-House, and its Surroundings

The completion of the Penzance Public Buildings forms an epoch in the history of the place, and an elderly person cannot help contrasting the present appearance of the town with what it was three-score years, or a century ago; as we know it to have been from well-remembered vestiges of the old time, and from the accounts of our grandparents, who, if they revisited our town at the present time, would be much surprised, and not over well pleased, at all the changes which have taken place during the last hundred years, many of which are alterations without improvement, nay, often wanton destruction of what can never be restored, however regretted. Who that remembers the picturesque and interesting old market-house, with the corresponding buildings surrounding or near it, such as the house in which Sir Humphry Davy was born, the cosy nook under the balcony of the "Star" inn, where often of an evening he held his youthful comrades spellbound by the wonderful stories that his poetical imagination inspired, can help regretting their removal and loss? I can't understand, nor can many others, what was the inducement to remove the old balcony from this inn, and other houses throughout the town! They were no obstruction to the footpath, and the very aspect of these appropriate, cosy-looking entrances to the old inns infused a feeling of comfort and seclusion that one misses very much in the glaring, lantern-like modern hotels. Besides, as an interesting memorial of our most illustrious townsman, it is ten thousand pities it should have been destroyed. The picturesque scene is gone, never to be restored, which was formed by the projecting balcony, with its rustic pillars and casemented lights, combined with the high gables, mullioned and labled windows, with the penthouse-like projections of the old market-house. It is much to be regretted that, when the old building was taken down, its site should have been occupied by any structure more massive than an elegant monument to Sit Humphry Davy—suppose it had been a fountain, of an antique Gothic pattern, surmounted by a statue of Sir Humphry, with niches in

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