conspicuous over the rest-the long vale of Troutbeck, with its picturesque cottages, in "numbers without number, numberless," and all its sable pines and sycamores on the farther side, that most silvan of all silvan mountains, where lately the Hemans warbled her native wood-notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly called Dovenest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, magnificent giants looking westward to the Langdale Pikes, (here unseen,)

"The last that parley with the setting sun,' Immediately in front, the hills are low and lovely, sloping with gentle undulations down to the lake, here grove-girdled along all its shores. The elm-grove that overshadows the Parsonage is especially conspicuous-stately and solemn in a green old age-and though now silent, in spring and early summer clamorous with rooks in love or alarm, an ancient family, and not to be expelled from their hereditary seats. Following the line of shore to the right, and turning your eyes unwillingly away from the bright and breezy Belfield, they fall on the elegant architecture of Storr's-hall, gleaming from a glade in the thick woods-and still looking southward, they see a serene series of the same forest scenery, along the heights of Gillhead and Gummer's-How, till Windermere is lost, apparently narrowed into a river, beyond Townhead and Fellfoot, where the prospect is closed by a beaconed eminence clothed with shadowy trees to the very base of the Tower. The points and promontories jutting into the lake from these and the opposite shores-which are of a humbler, though not tame character-are all placed most felicitously-and as the lights and shadows keep shifting on the water, assume endless varieties of relative position to the eye, so that often during one short hour, you might think you had been gazing on Windermere with a kaleidoscopical eye that had seemed to cre

ate the beauty which in good truth is floating there forever on the bosom of nature.

That description, perhaps, is not so very much amiss; but should you think otherwise, be so good as to give us a better. Meanwhile let us descend from The Station, and its stained windows-stained into setting sunlight-frost and snow-the purpling autumn-and the first faint vernal green-and re-embark at the Ferry-house pier. Berkshire Island is fair-but we have always looked at it with an evil eye since unable to weather it in our old schooner, one day when the Victory, on the same tack, shot by it to windward like a salmon. But now we are half-way between Storr's Point and Rawlinson's Nab-so, my dear Garnet, down with the helm and let us put about for a fine front view of the Grecian edifice. It does honor to the genius of Gandy-and say what people choose of a classic clime, the light of a Westmoreland sky falls beautifully on that marblelike stone, which, whether the heavens be in gloom or glory, "shines well where it stands," and flings across the lake a majestic shadow. Methought there passed along the lawn the image of one now in his tomb! The memory of that bright day returns, when Windermere glittered with all her sails in honor of the great Northern Minstrel, and of him the Eloquent, whose lips are now mute in the dust. Methinks we see his smile benign-that we hear his voice silver-sweet!

"But away with melancholy, Nor doleful changes ring as such thoughts came like shadows, like shadows let them depart-and spite of that which happeneth to all men, "this one day we give to merriment." Pull, Billy, pull-or we will turn you round-and in that case there is no refreshment nearer than Newby-bridge. The Naiad feels the invigorated impulse-and her cut-water murmurs to the tune of six knots through the tiny cataract foaming round her bows. The

woods are all running down the lake-and at this rate, by two post meridiem will be in the sea.

Commend us-on a Tour-to lunch and dinner in one. 'Tis a saving both of time and money and of all the dinner-lunches that ever were set upon a sublunary table, the facile principes are the dinner-lunches you may devour in the White Lion, Bowness. Take a walk-and a seat on the green that overlooks the village, almost on a level with the lead-roof of the venerable church-while Hebe is laying the cloth for a repast fit for Jove, Juno, and the other heathen gods and goddesses-and if you must have politics-why, call for the Standard or Sun, and devote a few hurried and hungry moments to the new French Revolution. Why, the Green of all Greens-often traced by us of yore beneath the midnight moonlight-till a path was worn along the edge of the low wall, still called "North's Walk" -is absolutely converted into a reading-room, and our laking party into a political club. There is Louisa with the Leeds Intelligencer, and Matilda with the Morning Herald-and Harriet with that York paper worth them all put together for it tells of Priam, and the Cardinal, and St. Nicholas, but, hark! a soft footstep! And then a soft voice-no dialect or accent pleasanter than the Westmorelandwhispers that the dinner-lunch is on the table-and no leading article like a cold round of beef-or a veal pie! Let the Parisians settle their Constitution as they will-meanwhile let us strengthen ours-and after a single glass of Madeira and a horn of home-brewed-let us off on foot-on horseback-in gig -car-and chariot-to Troutbeck. It is about a couple of miles, we should think, from Bowness to Cook's House-along the turnpike road-half the distance lying embowered in the Rayrig woods-and half open to lake, cloud, and sky. It is pleasant to lose sight now and

then of the lake along whose banks you are traveling, especially if during separation you become a Druid. The water woos you at your return with her bluest smile, and her whitest murmur. Some of the finest trees in all the Rayrig woods have had the good sense to grow by the roadside, where they can see all that is passing, and make their own observations on us deciduous plants. Few of them seem to be very old-and they wear well, trunk sound to the core, arms with a long sweep, and head in fine proportions of cerebral development, fortified against all storms-perfect pictures of oaks in their prime. You may see one-without looking for it-near a farm-house called Miller-ground-himself a grove. His trunk is clothed in a tunic of moss, which shows the ancient Silvan to great advantage-and it would be no easy matter to give him a fall. Should you wish to see Windermere in all her glory, you have but to enter a gate a few yards on this side of his shade, and ascend an eminence called by us Green-bank-but you had as well leave your red mantle in the carriage, for an enormous white, longhorned Lancashire bull has for some years established his headquarters there, and you would not wish your wife to become a widow, with six fatherless children. But the royal road of poetry is often the most splendid and by keeping the turnpike, you soon find yourself on a terrace to which there was nothing to compare in the hanging gardens of Babylon. There is the widest breadth of water-the richest foreground of wood-and the most magnificent back-ground of mountains-not only in Westmoreland, but-believe us in all the world. That blue roof is Calgarth

and no traveller ever pauses on this brow without giving it a blessing-for the sake of the Illustrious Dead-for there long dwelt in the body Bishop Watson, the Defender of the Faith, and there within the

shadow of his memory still dwell those dearest on earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone-road that leads by St. Catherines, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and downs in this life were ever more enlivening -not even the ups and downs of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, seven feet high, are admirable contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes one does feel tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting stone-wall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque-though sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never a turning; so, this must be a short one, which has a hundred. You have turned your back on Windermere-and our advice to you is, to keep your face to the mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel -a diamond of a stream-but Bobbin-mills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his delight-and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded banks-and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it up-but the miner works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living stone sometimes silent-sometimes singing and sometimes roaring like thunder-till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the woodenbridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan that sometimes sees its image

in his breast, and through alder and willow banks murmurs away his life in the Lake.

Yes that is Troutbeck Chapel -one of the smallest-and to our eyes the very simplest-of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be remembered when more pretending edifices are forgottenjust like some mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent person, whose acquaintanceship-nay, friendship-we feel a wish to cultivate-we scarce know why-except that he is mild, sensible, and silent

whereas we would not be civil to the brusque, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word or look of courtesy _to save him from the flames. For heaven's sake, Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel ! There is nothing but a square tower-a horizontal roof-and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor feature-and the stream here very common-place. Put them not on paper. Yet alive-is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here-in this utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil-and as the bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled heart whispers to itself" this is peace!"

The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your Troutbeck statesmen are the most litigious- and most quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath in all the parish that has not cost a hundred pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant stile is referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a marchwall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a frost

loosened stone tumble from some skrees down upon a neighbor's field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and ears to fee rascally attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go to the land-sharks and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, will sue for something or another in formâ pauperis, were it but the worthless wood and secondhand nails that may be destined for his coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life-but we must take pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were every whit as bad in the time of the Patriarchs-else, whence the satirical sneer, "sham Abraham ?" Yonder is the Village straggling away up along the hillside, till the farthest house seems a rock fallen with trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in clusters of twos or threes-with here and there what in Scotland we should call a clachan-many a sma' toun within the ae long toun-but where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would have wished to plant them, on knolls, and in dells, and on banks and braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in picturesque confusion, by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides ?

If you have no objections-our pretty dears we shall return to Bowness by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march-so that we may one and all indulge in our own silent fancies and let not a word be spoken-virgins-under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable till we crown the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already and we hear our musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his cottage, the head and shoulders of

Windermere are seen in their most majestic shape-and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, Gorgeousland," to gaze on which for an hour might almost make a Sewell Stokes Poetaster.

a

Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round-and despises the twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down-from head to foot-from the Brathay to the Leven-of the proper breadth precisely to a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay-on which the birds love to balance themselves-at low or high water, to be visibly longer or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such occasions, since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our skiff from the Endeavor,-the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be impaired-so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of its silvan shores! True, there are flaws in the diamond-but only when the squalls come-and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue, as an angel's eyes. Lowood Bay-we are now embarked in Mr. Jackson's prettiest pinnace-when the sun is westeringwhich it now is-surpasses all other bays in fresh-water Mediterraneans, Eve loves to see her pensive face. reflected in that serenest mirror, To flatter such a divinity is impos sible-but sure she never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in that truest of all glasses, set in the chastest of all rich frames. Pleased she retires

with a wavering motion-and casting "many a longing, lingering look behind "-fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger-we really know not which-takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with