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ST. IVES 243 him, I preached in the evening not far from the market-place. There was a vast concourse of people, very few of the adult inhabitants of the town being wanting. I had gone through two- thirds of my discourse, to which the whole audience was deeply attentive, when Mr. S. sent his man to ride his horse to and fro through the midst of the congregation. Some of the chief men in the town bade me go on, and said no man should hinder me, but I judged it better to retire to the room." We may be sure it was no personal shrinking, but a regard for the public peace, that caused the preacher's decision. Twenty years later he wrote : " Here God has made all our enemies to be at peace with us, so that I might have preached in any part of the town. But I rather chose a meadow, where such as would might sit down, either on the grass or on the hedges — so the Cornish term their broad stone walls, which are usually covered with grass." Of his last visit he says that "well-nigh all the town attended, and with all possible seriousness. Surely forty years' labour has not been in vain here." The numberless meeting-houses and Bethels throughout Cornwall bear at least one form of testimony to the endur- ing fruits of that " forty years' labour." There are other things besides Methodists at St. Ives ; there are painters and pilchards. The colony of artists here is almost as famous as that of Newlyn, and there are at least sixty different studios. Pictures from St. Ives have won worldwide fame ; in fact, artistically, Cornwall would have long since become stale were it not for its inexhaustible charm. The painters bring some- thing of a Latin Quarter element with them, and are by no means limited to British in nationality. 14