possession of by the fat housekeeper, to whom he did the amiable as Frank had the knack of doing to anything with a petticoat. Cousin John handed off a stately damsel, whom I afterwards recognised as the upper housemaid, and I was claimed by a dapper little second-horse rider, of whom I flatter myself I made a complete conquest by the interest I took in his profession, and the thorough knowledge I displayed of its details. I had to make most of the conversation myself, certainly, for his replies, though couched in terms of the deepest respect, and accompanied by a chivalrous deference for my sex and appearance to which I was totally unaccustomed from the partners of a London ball-room, consisted for the most part of little more than Yes, Miss,' and 'No, Miss,' with an additional smoothe of the smoothest, shiniest head I ever beheld. When I had exhausted the meets of the hounds for the ensuing week, with a few general observations on the pursuit of hunting, and the merits of that noble animal, the horse, I began to get high and dry for further topics, and was not sorry when three fiddles and a flute struck up inspiriting tones, and away we all went, cross hands,' 'down the middle and up again,' to the lively and by this time tolerably familiar air of Sir Roger de Coverley.' I am bound to confess that, as far as the servants were concerned, everything went on with the utmost propriety and respect. Sir Guy, indeed, pulled his partner about with an unnecessary degree of vigour, which at times almost degenerated into a romp, and squeezed my hands in 'The Poussette' with an energy of affection which I could well have dispensed with; but every one else was a very pattern of politeness and decorum. In fact, the thing was almost getting stupid, when my little second-horse rider and myself, returning breathless from our rapid excursion down some two-and-thirty couple, were brought up,' startled and dismayed by a piercing scream from at least that number of female voices, all raised at the same instant. Fire, fire!' exclaimed the tall housemaid at my elbow. Save me, save me!' shrieked the fat housekeeper, plumping into Frank Lovell's arms, and well-nigh bringing him to the ground, in which case she must have crushed him. Murder, murder!' shouted my idiot of a maid, Gertrude, rushing frantically for the doorway, followed by Sir Guy, who was swearing, I am sorry to say, most fearfully. 6 Stand still, fools!' I heard Lady Scapegrace exclaim in her deep tones, and let nobody open the door! By this time there was a rush of all the women towards the door; and as the centre of the room was cleared, I saw what had happened. The mushin transparency had caught fire-a large fragment of it was even now blazing on the floor, and the consequences amongst all those light floating dresses and terrified women might have been indeed awful. For an instant everybody seemed paralyzed-everybody but Cousin John; during that instant he had flung off his coat, and kneeling upon it, extinguished the flames; they were still blazing over his head: with a desperate bound he tore down the ill-fated transparency; regardless of singed hair and blistered hands, he clasped and pressed it and stamped on it, and smothered it. Ere one could have counted fifty the danger was over, and not a vestige of the fire remained. How handsome he looked, with his brave face lighted up and his eyes sparkling with excitement! Nobody could say John wanted expression of countenance now. The next moment he was quietly apologizing in his usual tone to Lady Scapegrace for 'spoiling her beautiful transparency,' and parrying her thanks and encomiums on his courage and presence of mind, with an assurance that he only pulled it down because he happened to be directly under it;' but he could not help turning to me and saying, 'Kate, I hope you were not much frightened.' The words were not much, but they were uttered in the old kind voice; they rung in my ears all the evening, and I went to bed happier than I ever thought I could have been after such a day. 1856.] 555 SKETCHES ON THE NORTH COAST. BY A NATURALIST. No. II.-THE ROCKS IN SPRING. FROM the old Manor House a somewhat steep and precipitous bank leads down to the shore of the bay. The bay exactly resembles an inland loch-it is so completely hemmed in that only a narrow channel is left for the flow and reflow of the tide. Here it is almost always calm-the sea ripple dies gently upon the yellow sand-any day in the year you can see the whole formation of the bottom through the limpid and breezeless water. To the north, beyond the rocks which guard the entrance to this salt lake, spreads a great extent of sandy shore, dimpled into bays, and broken near the centre by the estuary of the Scamander, which there falls into the sea. There is nothing peculiarly picturesque in the line of coast; still, it is not without a certain bleak beauty, especially when the sun strikes athwart the sand-hills, and throws a golden line between the threatening sky and the murky water. I do not know if it be generally felt, but a low line of barren bent or moor, beaten by and lying along the margin of the wintry sea, always conveys to me an impression of desolateness that nothing else does. When the tide is full, the river mouth swells into a lake which runs some three or four miles inland; but at low water nearly the whole of this surface is uncovered, and it is then the resort of thousands of wading birds, who find abundant food in the shellfish and marine insects which the tide leaves behind. On both sides the banks stretch away into sandy bents, among which the rabbit burrows and the curlew breeds. Returning to the point of the coast from which we started, and sailing in a southerly direction, the shore gradually becomes more precipitous, until the rocks assume a wildness, picturesqueness, and terrible grandeur, which I would in vain attempt to describe. During the spring and summer, these rocks are whitened with clouds of snowy birds, who gather together by a kind of tacit understanding for the purposes of nidification from all quarters of the ocean. Such is the appearance of the coast-the interior is not less characteristic. Immediately around the lawn, with its stunted masses of brushwood, there is a considerable extent of cultivated land, where the partridge shooting in October is not by any means to be despised. From this the country rises up in gentle undulations till it reaches the heather. These flat, dreary, uplying moors, with the thatched cottage of the crofter and his scanty patch of cultivation scattered along their borders, stretch away toward the west for many miles, and form a district where the wailing cry of the plover, and the hoarse crow of the gor-cock, are almost the only sounds that disturb the solitude. In the hollows the autumn rains collect, and form enormous bogs, in which, as they are quite impassable except occasionally in the height of summer, the snipe, the mallard, and the teal bring up their families in perfect seclusion. Among these marshy fens, when the snow is on the ground, and the whole land hard with winter-frost, On midnights blue and cold, Long strings of geese come clanging from the stars. a Still further inland there are extensive fir woods, worth a visit were it only for that most gorgeous and picturesque combination golden sunset seen through the black and ragged masses of the pine! Woodcock and pheasants frequent these sombre covers, and among the gnarled oaks the delicately fashioned roe moves silently past, like the stealthy creature of a dream! And as a frame for the picture, beyond the moor and the forest rise up one over the other a long succession of snowy mountains. You cannot well believe what a comfort these cool white hills become to us in the lovely summer night. The Alpine ridge sprinkled with snow, and brought out fresh and roseate against the horizon, has always been a favourite with the painter; but no painting ever rightly conveys to me the sense of mysterious depth and solemnity which the presence of the inviolable and virgin snow communicates to the blue void beyond! Who can forget the Jounfrau, hanging like a golden cloud in the sky, long after night has fallen upon all the valleys? The rocks of which I have just spoken lie within a few miles of us, and few things can be more enjoyable than a day spent among them in spring-either by land or water. About the centre of the 'Heughs,' as they are called by the fishermen, they converge into a large land-locked bay, and there is a perilous seat half-way down the cliff, where I have often sat for hours watching the on-goings of a most orderly society. The sea is very worthy of our truest love at all times, and with the instinct of most Englishmen, I love it with perfect devotion; but never so entirely as here. The cliff hangs overhead, and shuts out all communication with the prosaic country behind-the country of corn, and turnips, and oxen, and red-faced farmers, and agricultural principles. We are done with the old world, and the new stretches away from our feet to the furthest horizon, a luminous plain of waters. It is the ocean itself that lies below us, mapped out into great spaces of light and shade-of light where the April sunshine simmers upon the sea, of shade as the soft breeze follows the cloud along the water. We are all conversant with the plastic character of this season, the rapid and noiseless changes that pass over the face of the sky in the course of a forenoon; and surely the April shadows that shift upon the sea, are even more fickle and capricious than those that cross the land. And is not the heaven that arches the main richer and more brilliant than it is elsewhere? What a delicious depth of colour has been shed over the nearer sky; how delicate those more fickle tints that linger along the horizon; how exquisite the grace and intricacy of that fretted network of cloud which clings to the ether; how pure and lustrous those great white masses overhead that sweep slowly away toward the purple hills! Among the shadows, white sails in the blue distance speed noiselessly hither and thither, and closer to the rocks groups of auks caress each other with their bills, and enjoy the languid motion of the sea. And about us there is a great quiet a cold and stately seclusion-broken though it be by the rustling murmur of the water upon the rocks and the shrill complaints of a varied and animated life. The whole of this sweet, calm, Italian-like bay is shut in by the strange devices of a vagrant imagination-devices more quaint and daring than any artist ever ventured to work into his marble. The bold belfry of the Florentine, the crazy minaret of the Mussulman, the solemn strength of Notre Dame, the network meshes of the exquisite Antwerp spire, all crowded and mingled together without the slightest deference to the scruples of architectural etiquette. Sportive columns, fantastic arches, eccentric domes, bridges fitly dedicated to the devil, long quiet coves in which the sea is always silent, proud defiant buttresses, against which the white passion of the surf never relents! Fashioned by the action of the water upon the rock through long silent centuries, no poet was ever visited by fancies more wild and forlorn than may here be traced, wrought in the frolic architecture of the waves! And even these craggy precipices feel the gentle influences of the spring-time. The pale convolvulus creeps timidly along the giddy height; the blue violet and the yellow primrose peer curiously from among the long rank grasses; tufts of sea-pink and feathery ferns grow down to the very margin of the water, and touch the black and stern face of the rocks with a bright and delicate beauty. There is one rock, about a mile from the shore, which, at high water, is entirely covered, and which always strikes me by its desolate loneliness. From what I have been told, it represents, I believe, that Craig of Classnessie,' on which took place 1856.] The Rocks in Spring. 557 see what they had not seen before. Those who take them home do it in hopes of having something foretold by them; but they do not keep them above twentyfour hours, considering themselves bound to row out to sea, and put them down in the same place where they found them. Though abandoned by the mermaid, the rock is still much frequented by the cormorants, who have, indeed, such an affection for it, that hardly by any persuasions can they be induced to quit it. They often allow the water entirely to cover it before they think of leaving, merely rising for a moment when a threatening wave approaches, to settle directly it has passed. one of the most tragical murders if it was out of curiosity or surprise, to recorded in the criminal jurisprudence of the district. An unfortunate tenant having incurred the displeasure of his superior, was bound hand and foot, and carried in a boat to this same rock, where (as the old indictment proceeds), having been left, the tide overflowed the said Craig, and so he was pitifully drowned, and carried away to the main-ocean-sea. What a frightful death! Fancy the wretch there when the boat has left, and the plash of its oars has died away toward the distant shore-how he listens to the dull monotonous beat of the water against the rock as the inevitable tide creeps slowly towards him-how he gazes, hour after hour, painfully through the hot sunshine for any saving sail-how he consents at length to abandon hope, when he feels the salt water rising about his cheek, and the soft ripple of the summer sea, wiping, with a malicious gentleness, the angry foam from his lip! The crag was, moreover, at one time a favourite haunt with the capricious sisterhood of the ocean; and even yet there are few of the fishermen who have not seen, as she sank beneath the cold water in the grey light of the early dawn— The cold strange eyes of a little mermaiden, And the gleam of her golden hair. I shall not call it (says the former, with that excessive caution which characterized all his speculation) the mermaid's offspring, yet one might give it this name till further examined into. This creature is often caught on hooks, and is well known to most of the fishermen. They are of different sizes; some are of the bigness of an infant of half a year old, others of a year, and others again as big as a child of three years old; of this last size there was one lately taken at Selloe Sound. The upper part was like a child, but the rest like a fish. Those who caught it threw it directly into the sea. Sometimes the peasants take them home to their houses, and, as they say, give them milk, which they drink. They tell us that those creatures then roll their eyes about strangely, as The scrath is not by any means a lively bird; he entertains serious, not to say gloomy views, on most of the questions of the day. I have seen these sit together for hours without uttering a syllable to each other-in a kind of dyspeptic dejection. Apart from his sentiments upon serious subjects, this is probably the result of a system of overfeeding, for even with the most perfect digestion, such excessive eating must tell upon the spirits. They are, moreover, somewhat speculative birds, and employ their leisure in attempting various impracticable experiments. They seem, in particular, to entertain a theory that they are intended by Providence to live upon invisible pinnacles, where a titmouse could not find footing. The consequences may be easily foreseen. No sooner is the unwieldy monster seated, than he loses his balance, and a fierce and violent flapping of his sable pinions is necessary to prevent him from falling to the bottom. Nothing will convince him of the fallacy of the notion, and what satisfaction and enjoyment he can find in an insane proceeding like this, which so ill consorts, moreover, with the sepulchral gravity of his appearance, it would be difficult to determine. The cormorant is only one of a multitude of birds who frequent these rocks, and who are now busily employed sitting upon their nests, or sweeping up in their curious oblique way from the sea with food. Marrots, razor-bills, and puffins that during the winter have been scattered far and wide over the ocean, have returned en masse to seek a birth-place for their young. These sea-birds do not commence to sit until about the first or second week in May; but they generally arrive at least a month before that period. For two or three years I have noticed great numbers scattered over the breeding places towards the end of March, when, after having remained a day or two, as if to select their respective stations, they again quit the vicinity, and do not return for some weeks. I do not think that this temporary sojourn has been observed by any of our ornithologists, and it is an interesting and curious fact. Having selected their several stations-and each family appropriates a distinct one to itself they make their nests, and commence to sit. The common gull and the puffin are the earliest. I have generally found their brownand-white eggs about the beginning of May. The razor-bills and the guillemots follow, and the kittiwake is the latest, though, in point of time, it arrives before any of the others. The young do not appear until the month of July, and being ready to fly, or at least to swim, in the course of a couple of weeks, the whole colony has commonly left the cliffs by the 12th of August. There is a pleasant fiction in reference to the young of the guillemot, suggested by Waterton, and sanctioned by Yarrel. These excellent gentlemen assert that the old marrot carries its young from the nest to the sea; and this because they have seen young guillemots in the water who were quite unable to fly. For myself I have never seen the old guillemot perform any such office, and I do not think it does. Very young birds are certainly often found in the water; but I have seen them quite as young, frightened by the noise of a shot, tumble right out of the nest into the sea, dive at once, and rising after a short interval, begin to swim about as though they had been accustomed for years to the water, and to a sheer fall every day of a couple of hundred feet. It is quite true that from some situations they could not fall into the sea; but I am convinced that on these they remain till they are able to fly. Any one who has climbed among the rocks in the beginning of August must have observed, especially in the nests placed on the land side of a ravine, numbers of young birds of very considerable size, and quite able upon a near approach to shift for themselves. And I feel pretty certain that when once in the water they never attempt to return to the rocks, but make for the main ocean at once. Often when sailing along the coast of a summer evening more than six miles from the breeding-place, I have met the old bird and its single young one moving out to sea; the young so small that had it not been for the peculiar deep-toned melancholy note of the parent (resembling thecoo of the cushat' at night), which is quite unlike its usual cry, and is never heard except as a note of warning or endearment to its young, I should not have discovered that there was any other than the single old bird near. The small sparrow-hawk breeds among the more inland rocks in considerable numbers, and in what is called the Bloody Hole, a pair of peregrines have had their eyrie for time immemorial. Either the eggs (of which there are never fewer than four of a dull deep red,) or the young, are taken away every year, and yet the old birds return season after season to the same spot, with the most reckless hardihood. They appear early in spring, and by the 7th of April last year, I found two eggs in the nest. The peregrine is a very watchful bird, and the moment one approaches the rocks where it has its eyrie, it rises high into the air, and commences a storm of harsh, grating, and unmusical sounds, which, as the bird itself is often quite invisible, seem come right out of the blue overhead. The eyrie of which I am now speaking, is placed on one side of a ravine, and from the other, which is perhaps a hundred yards off, one can see right under the overhanging rock, into the nest. When the falcon is present on her eggs, the bluish black of the body, the whitish feathers about the neck, and the bright complacent dilated eye, contrast curiously with the brown to |