bones of some ancient king-on three glens, that will be floating-we answer for them-in the haze of a soft dim blue aerial light. The huge mountain, along whose shoulder you are now crawling like so many lice, is Birker; and you can be at no loss to know down which of the three glens flows the stream that falls thunderously over the cliffs near the head of Eskdale, in shape of that famous Force.

We are tempted to go with you, boys, so vivid is the scene you are about to visit in our imagination. The birthplace of the stream is in a fairy ring of greensward among the brackens, where perpetually are lying a few sheep. Its source is a spring-a well on which float some water-cresses, which have the pleasantest wild taste that ever refreshed pilgrim's palate; and playing for a while at hide-and-seek among the knolls, it becomes, ere long, first a runlet, then a rill, and then a beck, "making sweet music with the enamelled stones;" here and there a pool reflecting, with its two trees, the one in air, and the other in water, the one whispering as the other fades. But bolder now in all its character, it rushes on exultingly towards that awful chasm; and in the hush you hear a hollow noise, which, for a while at first, you scarcely think is of a cataract. You see spray, and hear hawks, and know that you are descending upon BIRKER FORCE. There it foams sheer

over a perpendicular precipice, as high as you choose; and all the beck below it is a continuous series of waterfalls, till hazel-hid it joins the more quiet river that winds its shining way along the sylvan Eskdale.

But the chasm is a dismal prison in which the Force, like a madman, is raging with his chains. Dismal! Why that sun-burst has changed the gloom into glory, and the Force is joyful as a bridegroom on his wedding-day. A moment ago and the cliffs were pitch-black, but now they are bright as with rainbows. How got the wild flowers up yonder among the mosses and lichens, and how dare they smile so along the loose-hanging ledges of the rocks? God-and God only knows. The dreadful grows the beautiful-there is no anger in the torrent's voice-in the very thunder there is love. The caldron breathes up its mist to freshen the face of the precipice, and in the sparkling moisture the green'd trees rejoice. Trees! ay-trees grotesque in their grandeur, high aloft, shot athwart the chasm, and some dead of old age, and

overgrown with fearless parasites that let drop their drapery in floating festoons, that to and fro are waving, as on a sudden from different airts the hill-breezes blow. Gazing down the chasm thus filled, you find, with a profusion of the loveliest things in nature, where you had expected to find, and at first had seen, but a savage sternness and sterility, your eyes are carried away on into the distance; and through those screens, as if set in a frame, what a glorious picture! All sky and mountains. Too simple, perhaps, for art to transfer with fine effect to the canvass, but, as it hangs there, sublime. We called the scene immediately below, the "sylvan" Eskdale, and rightly; for from Dalegarth Hall, and indeed far below, all the way up to the Roman station at the foot of Hardknot, it used to be said of old, and may be said so still, that a squirrel could make his way without touching the ground. You see no groves now; only sweet sprinklings of native trees; and they are dropt but rarely, as the vale gets overshadowed towards its head, which, could you but see it, you would swear was most magnificent. But you must dream it below the blue gloom, where the " raven gambols like a dancing skiff." That vastness is Scafell, the mightiest mountain in England. But transparent as is the air, and distinct the outline of earth in heaven, you must not suppose that is his summit. You cannot see the Pikes. Some mountains at all times seem to be aspiring to reach the Empyrean; and in their proud-their vain ambition, they but expose their littleness; but he, in his calm, contented magnitude, like a truly great man, is felt to be, without effort, and unconsciously, sublime. The cloud-palaces, in all their grandeur, love to hang and hover over his head. Dear his inaccessible cliffs to the clear blue sky. There only, once no unfrequent bird, abide the old eagles. But to see the mountain king in his serenest state, you must be in a boat on Wastwater by midnight, when he is crested by the silver moon surmounting a diadem of stars.

Farewell for a few hours, gents; 66 we shall meet again at Philippi," i. e., Woolpack, on condition of your not previously breaking your necks on your way out of that chasm. It might not be amiss, perhaps, to provide yourselves with ropes; yet, in extremity, you can find egress by going over with the waterfall.

VOL. VI.

D

This cart is like an easy-chair. Yet judging from these stones and ruts, this road, in a common vehicle, would be a rough one-there-that was an exhilarating dunsh—we are not without hopes yet of being occasionally upset. But the axletree, being of native ash, is accustomed to such ups-anddowns, and on their well-greased navels whirl the wheels like those of the car of Phoebus.

Is this what is called in this county the high-road? Ohwhat Mr Moore calls one of the cross-roads of Fame. In our poor judgment, 'tis the channel of a mountain-river. The usual occupant is luckily from home in this dry weather, but we shall be in a taking, if the waterspout sends down the old gentleman. Nay! my good sir! you will never attempt that you perceive there is no bridge? Well-the cart seems to be wood-but is iron-what the horse is made of we cannot conjecture. Give Us the reins-for the Devil knows how to drive. There! look at US ONE-IN-HAND, victorious over a water-course that would laugh to scorn M'Adam and all his myrmidons.

But now we go bowling along the greensward, on tableland encircled by mountain-tops; and lo! Devock-Water, renowned for trouts, with its one rocky islet, where the sea-gulls breed. In less than no time we shall be at Dalegarth Hall, and can take en passant a peep over the cliff-edge into STANLEY GILL. Were we, in hopeless passion, to take the lover's leap, it should assuredly be into that beautiful abyss. We should not, if repentant half-way down, sigh for the plumes of a swan. Our metamorphosis would be into the Merlin. See! there he shoots! Combining in his pinions the powers of the dove's and the swallow's wing. Small but savage-and how fiercely wild his cry! Him the magpie shuns, chattering hidden in the woods-him the carrion-crow feareth as he smites sullen Sooty like a sunbeam-the croaking raven sails aloof from that imp of fury-the eagle's self, soaring seaward from his eyrie on Scafell, eyes with admiration the heir-apparent to the Throne of the Hideous Chasm. Hideous! The Paradise of this Bird of Prey, who, with his Princess is seen dallying on the cliff, in courtship of beak and talon, as they would tear one another into pieces in their crowning passion; and now, tumbling topsy-turvy up and down the air, one blended bunch of feathers, as Thomson says, "shivering with delight," and

then parting into two careering creatures that east and west carry their shrieklike cries, till the fit has subsided, the flight is gone, and the chasin is again still as death.

There is no such thing as satisfying some people with waterfalls. They quote Niagara, and Sam Patch. Niagara! why, 'tis hardly worth going to America to get yourself deafened for life by that eternal, that accursed roar. For ten years afterwards, that Lake-fall, for it is nothing else, kept booming in our ears like the sea. Our eyes could not elude that insupportable "water privilege," tumbling mile-wide from the sky.

"Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines;"

no river should cataract larger than the Clyde. BonitonCora-Linn-Stonebyres-sufficient for the soul is the din thereof, the flashing and the foam, and the spray-mist restless among the steady rainbows, coming and going unbidden of their bright selves, like a poet's dreams. Or penetrate the heart of the Highlands, and ghostlike glide down to the caldron of the Fall of Foyers. He is indeed a son of Thunder, and of Lightning too; for the sunshine, shooting into that infernal pit, in the blackness seems lightning, and there you are as if in midnight during meridian day. Oh! glorious old Scotland!

Then why love we so well "the beautiful fields of England," as Southey says; why now carting it over Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire, in Flight Second of Christopher at the Lakes? Because we have covered the cliffs, the clouds, the woods, and "the green silent pastures," with creations of our own, which now are imbedded into the channels of rivers, and spread over the bosoms of lakes, and diffused over grovetops, and hurried like lights and shadows along the sides of mountains, and resident in the air-palaces of the sky.

Let no blockhead, then, dare to abuse the north of England's waterfalls. Beautiful are they even when dry. That is to say, when down the sable rock-face is seen but a thin thread of silver, and the ear has to listen for the low lulling sound, or it catches but a tinkle that seems nowhere, and yet everywhere, like a fairy's voice.

There is STOCKGILL FORCE, as you go up towards the Grove, near Ambleside, alongside of scores of tiny waterfalls embowered in birch or hazel, where the squirrel gambols over the

blackbird's nest. The scene is new after every shower. "Beautiful exceedingly" in the afternoon of a mild summer day, when the heavens have been weeping for joy. Sublime after a thunder-plump, when all at once the Force flings itself in red foam over the cliffs, and joining the Rothay in wrath, discolours with turbid grandeur the waves of Windermere. But if you wish to know and to feel the power of dim daylight, when "sound is silence to the mind," and slow-moving shadows intensify the stillness, as through the umbrage they checker the mossy stones, all soft with verdant velvet embroidered with blue-eyed flowers admiring in this mirror their yellow hair, step into the hermitage at Rydal, and for an hour in imagination forswear the world for the cowl, the beads, and the book of a holy man, a saint for a season, and a sinner for life. A small man, if well made, shames a great hulking fellow of a giant. So finely proportioned may he be, that you might suppose him captain of the Six Feet Club. Just so is it with SKELWITH FORCE. We have gone over it in a canter. In high water it might be shot in ascension by a Scotch salmon. Yet though even minute 'tis magnificent. But Beauty loves to bathe herself in that pool; and like Acteon, without suffering his fate, we have seen the Goddess running up and down the banks and braes to dry herself in the sunshine, as naked as the day on which Diana first dawned in heaven. Elter-Water and all its woods separate that sweet grove from its sister-COLWITH FORCE, the Glory of Little Langdale, the Lady of the Woods. She would "not unsought be won;" but difficulty and danger are delightful for her sake, which you will, if a man, confess, as, while crawling along that ledge, you play plash into that pool, some six fathom deep, and reappearing to the Nymphs of the Naiad, all laughing on the banks, solicit the assistance of those branches, very convenient, if not near at hand, at least not far overhead, and if in autumn, hung "with mealy clusters of ripe nuts," which you can crack when you have gathered them, brown leamers every one, and guarded by no dragon, as in the Hesperides. An accident of that kind might not be so pleasant at DUNGEON GHYLL FORCE. Man's hands flung not that bridge over the abyss. Across a single stone is the transit—when from Pavey-Ark comes down the torrent in glee of flood, stunned you feel it shake—but there it has hung since the days of Noah, and there it will