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We remember a man in a coach, but forget his face and name, who, of all the Lakes, asserted most strenuously that the most beautiful was CONISTON. After a few miles we became curious to know the reason of his passionate predilection for that respectable sheet of water-when, putting his mouth close to our ear, he enunciated in a low but distinct and confidential whisper-" Char! Sir! Oh! those incomparable Char! They are the fish for my money, sir-Oh! Char! Char! Char!"

But independently even of Char! Char! Char! CONISTON is a good Lake. Nay, the fundamental features of the OLD MAN of the Mountains, especially when seen at sunrise, may be safely said to be sublime. But you must forget Windermere, before you can feel this her sister Lake to be very beautiful, and you never will for a moment suppose them Twins. It is easy, however, to forget Windermere; for the divinest things of earth are those of which, in ordinary moods, the soul soonest loses hold; so, having crossed the FERRY, lay yourself back in the corner of your carriage, and smoke a cigar. In a few minutes your mind will be in a mood of amiable and equable composure, almost approaching stupidity; and by the time you reach HAWKSHEAD you will be a fit companion for the man in the boat, and may be croaking in soliloquy Char! Char! Char! The country between the Ferry-House and Hawkshead is of the most pleasant and lively character-not unlike an article in Maga-full of ups and downs-here smooth and cultivated-there rough and rocky -pasture alternating with corn-fields, capriciously as one might think, but for good reasons known to themselves— cottages single, or in twos and threes, naturally desirous to see what is stirring, keep peeping over their neatly-railed front-gardens at the gentleman in a yellow post-chay—and as he thrusts his head out of the window to indulge in a final spit that might challenge America, his sense of beauty is suddenly kindled by the sight of sweet ESTHWAITE, whose lucid waters have, all unknown to that lover of the picturesque, been for a quarter of a mile reflecting his vehicle, and the small volume of cigar-smoke ever and anon puffed forth as he moves along among the morning reek of the stationary cottages. Nothing pleasanter than

"A momentary shock of mild surprise;"

and our traveller becomes at once poetical on the stately church-tower of the clustering village, bethinking himself fancifully of Hen and Chickens. Perhaps it is market-day morning; and the narrow streets are made almost impassable by bevies of mountain nymphs, sweet liberties, with cheeks lovely bright as the roses that are now letting slip the few unmelted dewdrops from the glow-heaps clustering in the eye of nature around the now lifeless porch of many a mountaindwelling, deserted at dawn, but to be refilled with mirth and music at meridian; for all purchases of household gear are over long before dinner-time. This is not Hawkshead Fair, and there is no dance at evening; nay, man and wife are already jogging homewards, in the good old fashion, on longbacked Dobbin ; lasses are tripping over bank and brae, unaccompanied by their sweethearts; and shrill laughter is wafted away into the coppice woods by the wicked, that is, innocent gypsies, as they fling a kiss to you, enamoured Cockney, wheeling along at the rate of eight miles an hour, and fifteenpence a mile, thereby showing you how much dearer to their hearts than man's love at times is woman's friendship. The Lancashire Witches!

What's here! 'Tis a profound abyss-and for a little while you see nought distinctly-only a confused glimmer of dim objects, that, as you continue to gaze, grow into fields, and hedgerows, and single trees, and clumps, and groves, and woods, and houses sending up unwavering smoke-wreaths, and cattle in pastures green as emerald, all busy at longprotracted breakfast, and people moving about at labour or at leisure, an indolent and an industrious world—and lo! now that your eyes, soon familiarised with the unexpected spectacle, have put forth their full power of vision, distinguishable from all the material beauty, serenely smiles towards you, as if to greet the stranger the almost immaterial being of an isleless Lake!

That is CONISTON. Now that you see the Lake, for a while you see nothing else-nothing but the pure bright water and the setting of its sylvan shores. So soothed is the eye, that the eye itself is the same as one's very soul. Seeing is happiness; and the whole day is felt to be, as Wordsworth finely says,

“One of those heavenly days that cannot die.”

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 dothat 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