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 image— the 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 hutsits 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

hailed her, rushing like a rhinoceros, we shall advise you how to spend the afternoon and the evening. Stroll into Yewdale and Tilberthwaite—and without a guide. The main-road is easily lost and easily found; and it is delightful to diverge

-as you dauner alang-into tributary paths, some of them almost as wide as the main current, which in truth is but narrowish, and still retaining marks of the wood cart-wheels, or the cars of the charcoal-burners,—and others slender as if made-which is probably the case-by hares limping along at dawn or evening — and leading you sometimes into a greenery of glade, and sometimes into a bloomery of sweetbriers, and sometimes into a brownery beneath an aged standard's shade, where, lying down on the moss, you may dream yourself into a Druid.

True, that a rivulet winds through Yewdale; but as you have lately been rather gouty, and are still somewhat rheumatic, pray plunge in, and you will seldom find the water much above the waistband of those expressibles-breeches. Mild as milk flows the soothing stream-in temperature so nearly the same as the summer air, that ere you are half across, you know not, but by the pressure on your knees, that you are in the water. What has become of you, my friend? Abuse not the bank for being treacherous-it has violated no trust-broken no promise; but the beautiful brown gravel,

"Mild as the plumage on the pheasant's breast,"

has been hanging by a precarious tenure over that "shelving plum"-as says that old Scottish ballad of the Mermaid-and you are suddenly in her embraces. And now that you rise to the surface, we assure you on our word of honour, that never before saw we you so like a salmon-beg your pardon—an otter. Nankeens in less than no time dry in the sunshine. At present you are yellow as ochre-but by-and-by will be whitish as of yore; you are drying visibly to the naked eye; why, you are like a very wild-drake who flaps himself out from the tarn, and up into the air-crying Quack, quack, quack-as merrily as a moistened horn sounding a reveillé !

Yewdale is but a small place-a swallow, all the while catching flies, could circle it in two minutes-that hawk-do you see him?—has shot through it in one-but then it is intersected by all the lines of beauty, and circumscribed by all the

lines of grandeur. We have a sketch-book-of some threescore pages-filled with views of Yewdale-and they might be multiplied by threescore-nor yet contain a tithe of its enchantments. Walk for a few seconds with your eyes shut, and on opening them, you find they are kaleidoscopes. The houses are a very few in number, but virtually many; and seem to have not only sloping but sliding roofs. You create new cottages at every step out of the old materials-yet they all in succession wear the grey or green garb of age, or hoary are they in an antiquity undecayed; and when the sunshine smites them, cheerful look they in their solemnity among younger dwellings, like sages smiling on striplings, and in their lifefulness forgetting all thoughts and feelings that appertain to death. So for trees-you see at once that every sycamore-clump is cotemporary with its cottage-here and there among the coppice-woods, a noble single stem has been suffered to wear his crown sacred from the woodman's axetortuous and grotesque shoots the ash from the clefts of the rocks, long ago incapable of being pollarded-beloved by blackbirds, the bright holly beats his yew-brother black and blue-and the pensile birch-say not that she weeps-looks on the gloaming like a veiled nun-as we in mid-day do like a ninny for saying so-for the truth is, that she is the mother of a fair family at her feet, at this moment waving their hair in the sunshine, on a small plot of greensward inaccessible to the nibbling of sheep, hare, or cony, but free to the visit of the uninjuring bee, that steals ere sunrise but the honey-dew that sparkles on the fragrant tresses. In spite of the associations connected with some of our earliest and most painful impressions, we all of us love the birch-and especially poets -though of all children that ever were fathers of men they bear, in general, such impressions the deepest, and could exhibit, if need were, their most ineffaceable traces!

Of Tilberthwaite, again, "much might be said on both sides," especially the right, as you walk up it from Yewdale. We prefer it to the Pass over the Simplon-just as we prefer a miniature picture of the Swiss Giantess to the giantess herself -an eyeful for one to an armful for ten. Our mind and its members are, like our body and its members, but of moderate dimensions-its arms are unfit for a vast embrace. No woman in humble life should be above five feet five, and a mountain

ought to be in the same proportion; what that is we leave you to discover who have not yet been in Tilberthwaite. The rule to go by with respect to a precipice is, that it be sufficiently high to insure any living thing being dashed into nothing, in the event of falling from summit to base; but not so high as to make it impossible for ordinary optics to see the commencement of the catastrophe. For these purposes, we should think fifteen hundred feet an adequate height; particularly with a rocky bottom. Hawks and kites command cliffs of that class, as they shoot and shriek across the chasms, or, soaring above them all, look down into the cataracted abysses from their circles in the sky. But when the rocky range is loftier far, to you who look up like a mouse from below, they seem like sparrows-or the specks evanish. True that an Eagle requires-demands three thousand feet at the lowest-but the Royal is a reasonable Bird, and is as well satisfied with his eyrie on Ben Nevis as on Chimborazo. The Condor can cry where you could not sneeze- can live for ages where you could not breathe an instantt-can shoot swifter horizontally when forty thousand feet high, than you could drop dead by decades down to the highest habitation of men above the level of the sea. But the Condor is a vulture. We love him not-though he was the Roc, no doubt, of the Arabian Nights, and of Sinbad the Sailor.

Try Tilberthwaite, then, by the Test Act, and few places indeed will be found superior for the purposes of poetry. You feel yourself well shut out and in among cliff and cloud; and though a cheerful and chatty companion when the "glass is at fair"—is he, the rivulet-" down-by yonder," in some of whose pools no angler ever let drop a fly-yet, after a night's rain, he is an ugly customer, and would make no bones of a bridge. By and by there is an end of precipices; and you get in among heights all covered with coppice-wood magnificently beautiful; ever and anon the vast debris shot from slate-quarries, still working, or worked out, giving a chaotic character to the solitude.

Some people will on no account whatever, if they can help it, return the way they came; and such having, once turned their backs on Coniston, will pass through Tilberthwaite, impatient to get into little Langdale, half-forgetful of all the grandeur and the loveliness they have ungratefully left behind

VOL. VI.

B