Detained at Falmouth.--Navigation at a stop.--An evening ramble.
Falmouth, March 6, 1787.
The glass is sinking; the west wind gently breathing upon the water, the
smoke softly descending into the room, and sailors yawning dismally at
the door of every ale-house.
Navigation seems at a full stop. The captains lounging about with their
hands in their pockets, and passengers idling at billiards. Dr. V----
has scraped acquaintance with a quaker, and went last night to one of
their assemblies, where he kept jingling his fine Genevan watch-chains
to their sober and silent dismay.
In the intervals of the mild showers with which we are blessed, I ramble
about some fields already springing with fresh herbage, which slope
down to the harbour: the immediate environs of Falmouth are not
unpleasant upon better acquaintance. Just out of the town, in a
sheltered recess of the bay, lies a grove of tall elms, forming several
avenues carpeted with turf. In the central point rises a stone pyramid
about thirty feet high, well designed and constructed, but quite plain
without any inscription; between the stems of the trees one discovers a
low white house, built in and out in a very capricious manner, with
oriel windows and porches, shaded by bushes of prosperous bay. Several
rose-coloured cabbages, with leaves as crisped and curled as those of
the acanthus, decorate a little grass-plat, neatly swept, before the
door. Over the roof of this snug habitation I spied the skeleton of a
gothic mansion, so completely robed with thick ivy, as to appear like
one of those castles of clipped box I have often seen in a Dutch garden.
Yesterday evening, the winds being still, and the sun gleaming warm for
a moment or two, I visited this spot to examine the ruin, hear birds
chirp, and scent wall-flowers.
Two young girls, beautifully shaped, and dressed with a sort of romantic
provincial elegance, were walking up and down the grove by the pyramid.
There was something so love-lorn in their gestures, that I have no doubt
they were sighing out their souls to each other. As a decided amateur of
this sort of _confidential promenade_, I would have given my ears to
have heard their _confessions_.