mouthing, mumping, moping, melancholy, mournful and miserable mummery, in the talk about Autumn. Autumnal tints

are all very well in their way, except upon the neck of an aunt or artichoke, where they are not so sweet as seasonable. But to ninety-nine people out of a hundred it is of no earthly consequence, whether tints or trees, and mountains, and so forth, are vernal (what the deuce is the proper summer adjective ?) autumnal, or brumal. The colour of the country is good enough at all times, except, perhaps, when the snow happens to be six feet deep, when, loth though we be to dissent from Mr Coleridge, we think white is too much of the prevailing tone, and neither orange nor purple. The chief objection to travelling in a mountainous country in winter, at least after, or during, a heavy fall of snow, seems to be that it is impossible. But, no doubt, a man looking out of his parlour window, with a good rousing fire at his back, and a pretty girl (his wife) in or out of the room,-up-stairs whipping the children, or down-stairs scolding the servants, may pass a few minutes in very agreeable contemplation of nature, even in winter, and on the morning after a half-dozen shepherds, and twenty score of sheep have been lost in the snow. Let, therefore, any man that chooses visit the Lakes in Winter if he can, and we shall not think him mad, only a little crazy. We should suppose that Spring was a season by no means amiss for Laking. But the difficulty here, is to know when it is Spring. Many and oft is the time when it has slipped through our fingers without our having felt it; and then, it is to be remembered, that in our Island it comes round only once in seven years. When a tourist is lucky enough to find himself among the Lakes in a bonâ fide spring season, he will enjoy himself intensely; for the autumnal tints may all go to the devil and shake themselves in comparison with the beautiful glories of mother Earth, and of Father Jove, between the middle of April and the middle of June. Midsummer is often so horridly hot that there is no living comfortably anywhere but in the cellar, except for a few hours in the early morning and the late evening. Then all is voluptuous languor—or bright awakening from a dream—or the divine hush of happy nature sinking again into dewy repose. With plenty of ginger-beer, spruce, cider, soda, and imperial pop, even the dog-days may be made passable; and by kicking off sheets

may

and blankets, and opening the windows of our room, a bed be prevented from being a stewpan, or an oven warmed by steam.

VI. So much for the best season of Laking. Now for the inns. Are the inns good? For the most part excellent. All the head inns are so; and in many places so are the second and third, and even the tail inns. Take, for example, Windermere. Can there be a better inn ever imagined than the White Lion at Bowness? Impossible. From small beginning, it has risen, like Rome, year after year, into splendour. Oh! that dear delicious parlour up-stairs, on the left hand as you go into the bowling-green! What charming char-what princely pike-what elegant eels-what matchless muttonwhat handsome ham-and what royal rounds of beef have we not devoured within these four walls! Then what beds! The worst of them is, that to leave them is almost impossible. You sink down into a soft vale of lilies, and your dreams are forthwith of all your desire. Seldom rose we up from our delightful dormitory till, about twelve o'clock, we heard the south breeze come pushing up from the sea. Then Billy used to tap at our door with his tarry paw, and whisper, "Master, Peggs is ready. I have brailed up the foresail; her jigger sits as straight as the Knave of Clubs; and we have ballasted with sandbags. We'se beat the Liverpoolian to-day." Then I rose; but as to beating the Liverpoolian, that triumph yet rests in the bosom of futurity. But we are forgetting the White Lion. We at last succeeded in establishing Scotch breakfasts there, against the united resistance of both Mr and Mrs Ullock. On our first establishment at these headquarters, the worthy pair used to send up for our breakfast a solitary egg, two or three wafers of dry toast, and a bite of butter like a button. We swallowed them all up at one gulp, and then asked the waiter, "Pray, where is breakfast?" The poor girl was dumbfoundered, and took us for Squire Ingleby, King of the Conjurors, Boaz, or Black Mr Devaynes from Liverpool; for our hair is black, and our complexion sallow. Ere long the whole system was changed. Four eggs, the loaf, honey, jelly and jam, tea and coffee, and a bowl of cream, cold beef, ham, potted char, a fowl, or any other trifle of that kind, were substituted for the button, and the wafer, and the

bantam's product; and such is the power of good example, that, a few days after the adoption of the new system, we happened to go into the bar, and there we found mine host and mine hostess, and their amiable family, imitating us to the utmost of their abilities in demolishing a breakfast, whose general features remain impressed upon our memory even unto this day. But, fair or ugly, gentle or gruff, reader, go to the White Lion, Bowness, and judge for thyself, of bed and board, and boat. You will lose your stomach there-perhaps your heart. But your life is pretty safe; for we believe, that such is the excellence of the flotilla belonging to Admiral Ullock, that fewer pleasure-parties have been drowned from the White Lion, than from any respectable inn among all the Lakes. About the inns at Lowood, Ambleside, the Ferry, and Newby Bridge, we could delight to prose like Coleridge, or poetise like Wordsworth; but suffice it for the present to say, that Lowood is a delightful inn; and we have been told by the very highest authority (Sir William Curtis), that there good eating, drinking, and sleeping, are to be found under the auspices of Mr Chapman ;-that the inn at Ambleside (in former days a paradise under the care of our respected friend Mr Wilcock, now land-steward at Calgarth), still flourishes in unabated splendour, and plenteous accommodation, beneath the banner of Mr Ladyman;-and that Newby-Bridge inn maintains its ancient reputation for civility and good fare, under the masterly and mistressly management of the Bells.

VII. So much for a mere specimen of an Essay on Inns—a subject which we have not at present leisure to pursue. Finally, and to conclude (as our friend the Reverend Terence Magrath is wont to say, after preaching for a couple of hours), what, it may be asked, are, and ought to be, the principal objects of the Lake tourist? We answer,-eating and drinking. Scenery, we hold, is a subordinate consideration. Such is the wise conformation of our animal economy, that few persons of taste can feel happy without four or five meals a-day. Poets and philosophers generally require six. It is all very well to admire the Langdale pikes (peaks of a mountain), but Windermere bass (perch) are much more admirable, especially when looked at towards the evening, when the shadows are long. Let prigs and pedants prate about the picturesque.

But, liberal enlightened reader of Blackwood, look thou at flood and fell at thy leisure, take solitary meditations among the mountains in due moderation, and, as you value our good opinion, make no odious and invidious comparisons between the woods, and the waters, and the rocks, which nature made for thy wonder and admiration. Look and listen-eat, drink, and be merry; and God bless you.

TENNYSON'S POEMS.1

[MAY 1832.]

[When this Review was written, Mr Tennyson had published none of those grander and more finished compositions which have given him a place among the immortals. His early volumes contained several pieces which his own good sense, confirmed perhaps by the animadversions of his reviewer, has induced him to expunge from the standard edition of his works. This must be borne in mind, in order that the critic may be acquitted, on the one hand, of undue severity, and, on the other hand, may get credit for the sagacity with which he predicts, in no uncertain terms, the advent of a genuine poet, who only required to be true to his own genius to secure the highest honours of his vocation. The republication of these trifles, and of the strictures to which they gave rise, will certainly detract nothing from the fair fame of the illustrious Laureat; while it may be profitable to some, and must be interesting to all, to mark the slight blemishes which obscured the early rising of a star which now shines the brightest in the firmament of living English Poets.]

ALMOST all men, women, and children, are poets, except those who write verses. We shall not define poetry, because the Cockneys have done so; and were they to go to church, we should be strongly tempted to break the Sabbath. But this much we say of it, that everything is poetry which is not mere sensation. We are poets at all times when our minds are makers. Now, it is well known, that we create nine-tenths at least of what appears to exist externally; and that such is somewhere about the proportion between reality and imagination. Millions of supposed matters-of-fact are the wildest fictions of which we may mention merely two, the rising and the setting of the sun. This being established, it follows that we live, breathe, and have our being in Poetry-it is the Life of our Life—the heart of the mystery, which, were it plucked out, and to beatno more, the universe, now all written over with symbolical characters of light, would be at once a blank

1 Poems, chiefly Lyrical. By ALFRED TENNYSON.