lakes to retain its sea, nor towers to emulate rocks that Nature has denied. Primarily a place of business rather than of pleasure, one soon learns to admire and to respect it; there is nothing garish and little that is fashionable about it. Not many of its buildings are calculated to make an impression on the visitor, except the Market Hall that makes Market-Jew Street a rather striking thoroughfare, and the church of St. Mary, which has at least a charm of position. The Municipal buildings are a handsome piece of architecture; but it is not in these features, nor in the Morrab Gardens, in spite of their sub-tropical vegetation, that the charm of the town lies. That charm is a certain homely friendliness in the aspect of the place, the bustle, the soberness and geniality of its people. Further, Penzance is a good place to get away from — which sounds like a left-handed compliment, but has really quite other meaning; it is a fine centre for the whole far west of Cornwall.
As a town Penzance cannot claim great antiquity, though its district is remarkably rich in prehistoric remains. The name is pen-sans, the "holy headland"; evidently misread by the town authorities as "holy head," when they adopted the head of John the Baptist as the town arms. There was an ancient chapel standing on the present Battery Rocks, and this without doubt was the sacred headland which the title refers to. The mother-parish was St. Madron, about 2½ miles to the north-west; and it is by no means clear who Madron was. Some think he was an Irish Medhran, some a Welsh Madrun; some even assert that he was none other than the great Padarn of Wales. But in
