Never-never may it pass away-so profound the peace, that it is believed in the spirit's bliss to be immortal-the heavens are more heavenly in those mysterious depths-more celestially calm the clouds hang there unapproachable to sky-borne airs -alas! alas! the whole world of imagination is gone in a moment, and as a gust goes sughing over the gloom that blackens above the bed of fugitive lustre, you think of the man in the coach, without face or name, and cry with that sagest of bagmen,-" Char is the fish for my money-Char! Char! Char!"

And you have them potted to breakfast-nay, not only potted-but one "larger than the largest size" fried—while his flesh of pink or crimson-we confuse the names of colours, but not the colours themselves-blushes like the dawning of morn through the cloudlike skin-flakes that, not only edible, but delicious, browned and buttered, make part and portion of a feast such as Neptune never granted to Apicius, though that insatiate Roman caused search for fish all the bosom-secrets of the finny sea.

The Inn at Coniston Waterhead is a pleasant Inn. Sitting in this parlour one might almost imagine himself in the cabin of a ship, moored in some lovely haven of some isle in the South Seas. But a truce to fancy-and let this brawny boatman, with breast like the back of an otter, row us down the Lake, while we keep poring on the breaking air-bells, and listening to the clank and the clank's echo of the clumsiest couple of oars that were ever stuck on pins, and which, if found lying by themselves in a wood, would puzzle the most ingenious to conjecture what end in this world they might have been designed by art or nature to serve—for not a man in a million would suspect them to be oars. Yet the barge, glad to have got rid of some tons of slate, by those muscular arms is propelled not sluggishly along; and only look! how the Inn has retired with all its sycamores far back in among the mountains. Here is an old almanac-let us see who were ministers during that year. Poo! poo! a set of sumphs. Over the many thousand names pompously printed on these pages, and not a few ennobled by numerals, setting forth the amount of their pensions, and by italics telling the dignity of their offices, the eye wanders in vain that it may fix itself on that of one truly great man!

Or, shall we peruse some poetry we have in our pocket? No, no-print cannot bear comparison with those lines of light, scintillating from shore to shore, drawn by the golden fingers of the sun, the most illustrious of authors, setting but to outshine himself, and on every reappearance as popular as before, though Dan repeats himself more audaciously than Sir Walter. All we have to do is to keep our eyes open; at least not to fall quite asleep. If the senses slumber not, neither will the soul, and broad awake will they be together, though dim apparently, and still as death. Images enter of themselves into the spirit's sanctuary through many mysterious avenues which misery alone shuts up, or converts into blind alleys; but no obstruction impedes their entrance when filled with the air of joy, and they wend their way to the brain, which sends notice of their arrival to the sentiments slumbering in the heart. Then all the chords of our being are in unison, and life is music.

But who would have thought it? we are at the very foot of the Lake-and suppose we send back our barge to order dinner at six, which most unaccountably we forgot to do-that char must have been at the bottom of our forgetfulnessand stretch our legs a bit by a walk up Coniston-water, by the eastern shore. You may take the western, if you choose —but stop a bit—let our barge gather the shore, and take us in again at any point at the waving of a signal—so that we may thus command the choice of both banks-beginning with yonder rocky knoll above Nibthwaite—that most rural of villages and farms-for from it, and several eminences beyond it, the Coniston mountains are seen in full glory and grandeur. Nobody can calculate the effects of a few promontories. From some places the shores of this Lake look commonplace enough; almost straight-and you long for something to break the tame expanse of water. But here-are you not surprised and delighted to see those two promontories projecting finely and boldly across the Lake, changing its whole character from monotony into variety infinite, while two simple lines seem to alter the position of the far-off mountains? The broadest is our favourite-terminated nobly by steep rocks, and wearing a diadem of woods. We have seen them both insulated—and a stranger seeing them for the first time when the lake was high, would doubt not that they were permanent islands.

But they are bedimmed by the shadows of those large clouds which seem to be dropping a few hints of thunder; and see! my dear boy! beyond them, another far-projecting promontory lifting up its two eminences in the sunshine, and forming a noble bay, itself a lake. In five minutes you might believe you were looking at another Mere. Ah! we remember poor dear Green's vivid description of the scene now before our eyes, in those two volumes of his-labours of love-in which he has said a few kind words of almost every acre in the three counties. "The water here is pleasantly embayed, and Peel Island, beyond which little of the lake is seen, stretches boldly towards the western shore, beyond which green fields, rocks, woods, and scatterings of trees, harmoniously diluting into pretty clerations, are seen—a few fishermen's cottages and farmhouses give life to the scene; above which, an awful elevation, you see the Man-Mountain, or, as it is more frequently called, the Old Man, beyond which is the summit of the greater Carrs, which, with Enfoot on the right, and Dove Crag on the left, are the principal features of this admirable range;"—and heavens and earth what colouring! Nor Claude nor Poussin ever worshipped such an "aerial medium." We think we hear the spirit of the enthusiastic artist whisper in our ears his own impassioned words--.“ Hills and rocks, woods and trees, and the haunts of men, by the all-clarifying rays of the sun, are dragged from purple obscurity, and painted in burnished gold."

Looking long on water always makes us exceedingly sleepy; and we have our suspicions-shrewd ones that we have been taking a nap on this knoll—a siesta beneath the sycamores. Nothing so good for a rouser as a range of mountains. As the eye traverses them, the limbs feel as if they clomb, and the whole man like a shepherd starting from slumber in his plaid to seek the sheep-paths on the greensward that sweeps round the bases of the hawk-haunted cliffs. The Char of Coniston-let the anonymous man in the coach, without any particular expression of face, say what he will-are less illustrious than her mountains. They belong to her, and she to them—and whom God hath joined not all the might of man may sunder. She is wedded, for ever and aye, to her own OLD MAN; and bright and beauteous bride though she seem to be—not yet out of her teens-'tis thousands of

years ago since their union was consummated during an earthquake.

And must we confess that Coniston may bear comparison even with Windermere? She may; else had not the imagethe idea of the Queen of Lakes now painted itself on the retina of our eye-soul, till our heart beat within our bosom, as if we were but three-and-twenty, and over head and ears in love with some angel. Such comparisons are celestial. And out of two Lakes arises a third, a perfect Poem, which, the moment the Reform Bill is Burked, we shall assuredly publish, and forthwith take our place with Thomson and Wordsworth, with our heads striking the stars.

Each Lake hath its promontories, that, every step you walk, every stroke you row, undergo miraculous metamorphoses, accordant to the "change that comes o'er the spirit of your dream," as your imagination glances again over the transfigured mountains. Each Lake hath its Bays of Bliss, where might ride at her moorings, made of the stalks of water-lilies, the Fairy Bark of a spiritual life. Each Lake hath its hanging terraces of immortal green, that along her shores run glimmering far down beneath the superficial sunshine, when the Poet in his becalmed canoe among the lustre could fondly swear by all that is most beautiful on earth, in air, and in water, that these Three are One, blended as they are by the interfusing spirit of heavenly peace. Each Lake hath its enchantments, too, belonging to this our mortal, our human world-the dwelling-places, beautiful to see, of virtuous poverty, in contentment exceeding rich-whose low roofs are reached by roses spontaneously springing from the same soil that yields to strenuous labour the sustenance of a simple life. Each Lake hath its Halls, as well as its huts— its old hereditary halls (Coniston Hall! Calgarth Hall! seats of the Le Flemings and the Phillipsons, in their baronial pride!) solemn now, and almost melancholy, among the changes that for centuries have been imperceptibly stealing upon the abodes of prosperous men-but merry of yore, at all seasons of the year, as groves in spring; nor ever barred your hospitable doors, that, in the flinging aside, grated no "harsh thunder," but almost silent, smiled the stranger in, like an opening made by some gentle wind into the glad sky among a gloom of clouds.

Now, as that honest Jack Tar said of the scenery of the stage on which Parry's crew got up plays, when snugly benighted for months in their good ship among the polar snow" I call that philosophy." And its principle should be applied to all criticism of character-conduct-countenance-figure-and the Fine Arts. You have two friends, and you hear their respective merits discussed in a mixed company-which has always a decided leaning to the censorious. The eulogiums on the good qualities of the one are manifestly meant for libels on the supposed bad or indifferent qualities of the other; and, by-and-by, certain virtues of the other, or pretty points in his character, are enlarged on with accompanying candid admissions, that, on taking into account not a little vicious or repulsive about the one, there is not much to choose between the two- and thus you leave off with an equally poor opinion of Damon and Pythias. The talk turns upon two pretty girls-rival beauties; and an elderly gentleman so plays off the face of Phyllis against the figure of Medora, that the only conclusion to be legitimately drawn from his premises is, that the one is a dowdy, and the other a rantipole. Or the prosing is about a pair of poets; and a pompous person, with the appearance of a sub-editor, perpetrates such an elaborate parallel, proving that one bard has no taste, and the other no genius, that you begin to be perplexed with the most fearful suspicions that neither of them has either, and are obliged at last to set both down as a brace of blockheads. The truth being, all the while, that Damon and Pythias are not only faithful friends, but famous fellows; that Phyllis and Medora are equally goddessesthis the Venus Anadyomene, and that the Medicean; and that the poets, who had come in such questionable shapes that you felt inclined to cut them, were Spenser and Wordsworth, whom you now see sometimes sailing, sometimes rowing in the same boat-and sometimes, without aid of sheet or oar, dropping down the river with the tide, each in his own vessel, and casting anchor together amicably off the Nore, where, in the distance, they loom like Four-deckers.

We are sorry that we cannot join the dinner-party at the New Inn, Coniston Waterhead, being engaged at Pennybridge; but before seeing you into your barge, which is crawling along there like a crocodile, and now that we have