Monday, August 8 (London).--I took a walk in the Charterhouse. I wondered that all the squares and buildings, and especially the schoolboys, looked so little. But this is easily accounted for. I was little myself when I was at school and measured all about me by myself. Accordingly, the upper boys being then bigger than myself seemed to me very big and tall, quite contrary to what they appear now when I am taller and bigger than they. I question if this is not the real ground of the common imagination that our forefathers, and in general men in past ages, were much larger than now, an imagination current in the world eighteen hundred years ago. Whereas, in reality, men have been, at least ever since the deluge, very nearly the same as we find them now, both for stature and understanding.
Friday, September 7.--I rode to St. Agnes.
Sunday, 4--I. T. preached at five. I could scarcely have believed if I had not heard it that few men of learning write so correctly as an unlearned tinner speaks extempore. Mr. V. preached two such thundering sermons at church as I have scarcely heard these twenty years.
Monday, 5.--l rode on to Illogan, but not to the house where I used to preach; indeed his wife promised Mr. P., before he died, that she would always receive the preachers; but she soon changed her mind. God has just taken her only son, suddenly killed by a pit failing upon him; and on Tuesday last, a young, strong man, riding to his burial, dropped off his horse stone dead. The concurrence of these awful providences added considerably to our congregation.
Saturday, 10.--We rode to the Land's End. I know no natural curiosity like this. The vast ragged stones rise on every side, when you are near the point of land, with green turf between as level and smooth as if it were the effect of art. And the rocks which terminate the land are so torn by the sea that they appear like great heaps of ruins.
Sunday, 11.--I preached at St. Just at nine. At one, the congregation in Morva stood on a sloping ground, rank above rank, as in a theater. Many of them bewailed their want of God, and many tasted how gracious He is.
At five I preached in Newlyn, to a huge multitude; and one only seemed to be offended--a very good sort of woman, who took great pains to get away, crying aloud, "Nay, if going to church and sacrament will not put us to heaven, I know not what will."