parish of Luxulyan, but a particularly fine kind of granite was quarried there, for use in buildings where durability was necessary—­the lighthouse and beacon on Plymouth Breakwater having both been built with granite obtained from these quarries.  There was also a very hard variety of granite much used by sculptors called porphyry, a very hard and variegated rock of a mixed purple-and-white colour.  When the Duke of Wellington died, the Continent was searched for the most durable stone for his sepulchre, sufficiently grand and durable to cover his remains, but none could be found to excel that at Luxulyan.  A huge boulder of porphyry, nearly all of it above ground, lying in a field where it had lain from time immemorial, was selected.  It was estimated to weigh over seventy tons, and was wrought and polished near the spot where it was found.  When complete it was conveyed thence to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and now forms the sarcophagus of the famous Iron Duke.  The total cost was about L1,100.

We had now to walk all the way to Land’s End through a tin-mining country, which really extended farther than that, as some of the mines were under the sea.  But the industry was showing signs of decay, for Cornwall had no coal and very little peat, and the native-grown timber had been practically exhausted.  She had therefore to depend on the coal from South Wales to smelt the ore, and it was becoming a question whether it was cheaper to take the ore to the coal or the coal to the ore, the cost being about equal in either case.  Meantime many miners had left the country, and others were thinking of following them to Africa and America, while many of the more expensive mines to work had been closed down.  The origin of tin mining in Cornwall was of remote antiquity, and the earliest method of raising the metal was that practiced in the time of Diodorus by streaming—­a method more like modern gold-digging, since the ore in the bed of the streams, having been already washed there for centuries, was much purer than that found in the lodes.  Diodorus Siculus, about the beginning of the Christian Era, mentioned the inhabitants of Belerium as miners and smelters of tin, and wrote:  “After beating it up into knucklebone shapes, they carry it to a certain island lying off Britain named Ictis (probably the Isle of Wight), and thence the merchants buy it from the inhabitants and carry it over to Gaul, and lastly, travelling by land through Gaul about thirty days, they bring down the loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhine.”

There was no doubt in our own minds that the mining of tin in Cornwall was the most ancient industry known in Britain, and had existed there in the time of prehistoric man.  We often found ourselves speculating about the age, and the ages of man.  The age of man was said to be seventy, and might be divided thus: 

  At ten a child, at twenty wild,
    At thirty strong, if ever! 
  At forty wise, at fifty rich,
    At sixty good, or never!