First of May re-launched from her heather-house on the bay-marge, her hull bright as Iris, and yellow her light-ringed raking masts, now hidden on a sudden by the unfolding of her snow-white wings, as Condorlike she flies to meet her mate, the VICTORY, coming down along the woods of the Beautiful Isle under a cloud of sail! What! can this be Regatta-day, and is there to be a race for a cup or colours? Not for that radical rag, the Tricolor, but for St George's Ensign, or the "Silver Cross, to Scotland dear"bright mimicry woven by lovely hands of the famous Flag, that -" has braved a thousand years, The battle and the breeze." Bowness Bay is the rendezvous for the Fleet. And lo! from all the airts come flocking in the sunshine flights of felicitous wide-winged creatures, whose snow-white lustre, in bright confusion hurrying to and fro, adorns, disturbs, and dazzles the broad blue bosom of the Queen of Lakes. Southwards from forest FellFoot beneath the Beacon-hill, gathering glory from the silvan bays of green Graithwaite, and the templed promontory of stately Storrs, before the sea-borne wind, the wild swans, all, float up the watery vale of beauty and of peace. Out from that still haven, overshadowed by the Elm-grove, where the old Parsonage sleeps, comes the EMMA murmuring from the water-lilies, and as her mainsail rises to salute the sunshine, in proud impatience lets go her anchor the fair GAZELLE. As if to breathe themselves before the start, cutter and schooner in amity stand across the ripple, till their gaffs seem to cut the sweet woods of Furness-fells, and they put about -each on less than her own length -ere that breezeless bay may shew, among the inverted umbrage, the drooping shadows of their canvass. Lo! Swinburne the Skilful sallies from his pebbly pier, in his tiny skiff, that seems all sail; and the Norway NAUTILUS, as the wind slackens, leads the van of the Fairy squadron which heaven might now cover with one of her small clouds, did she choose to drop it from the sky. The squadron enters the Straitsand we see now but here and there gaff-topsail-peak, or ensign, gliding or streaming along the woods of the Isle called Beautiful; while hark, the merry church tower-bells hail the Victory, gathering the green shore round rushy Cockshut-point; and lo! ere you could count your fingers, the whole Southern Fleet is in Bowness Bay, now filled with light, music, and motion, glorifying the day, as if meridian yet bore in its bold bosom all the beauty of morn. But what means that exulting cheer, while all the hats and handkerchiefs of the village are waving along the beach? Ha! slips from her moorings, between garden and rock, with no other emblazonry but the union-jack at the peak of her mainsail, bold and bright as that bird when he has bathed his pinions in sun and sea, the swift-shooting OSPREY. Helm down-Garnet! if you wish not to be capsized-for ere yet the snowwreaths have garlanded your cutwater, a squall-a squall! Bearing up withouten fear in the pitchy blackness, the Osprey suddenly shews to the sunshine the whole breadth of her wings-hark! they for a moment rustle, but they flap not-and then right in the wind's eye she goes, disdainful of the tempest that sweeps past her on her foamy path, steady as a star. From Kirkstone and Rydal Cove, the clouds disparting let loose the northern winds, who have been lunching in those saloons after their journey from Scotland, which they left soon after sunrise-and hovering a little while delighted over Ambleside, the Village of the Pine-Groves, they join the fresh Family of Favonius, blowing and blooming in their flight from the Great and Green Gabels, where all the summer long are singing the waterfalls. All the boats at Waterhead had been lying for hours on their shadows; but now, just as a peal of rock-blast thunder from Langdale Quarry sends a sound magnificent, by way of signal gun, the black and white buoys are all left bobbing by themselves on the awakened waves, and the astonished Lakers on Lowood Bowling-green behold an Aquatic Procession of sails and serpents, as if some strong current in the middle of the lake were bearing at ten knots the gaudy pomp along-for not a breath fans the brows of the gazers from the shade of tent or tree, the winds being all in love with Windermere, and a-murmur on her breast, leaving on either shore, without a touch, the unrustling richness of the many-coloured woods. Broad between Bell-Grange and Miller-Ground-with no isle to break the breadth of liquid lustre-but with an isle anchored to windward, on whose tall trees are seen sitting some cormorants-broadest of all its bending length from the Giants of Brathay to the humble holms of Landing, where in mild metamorphosis it narrows itself into a river, the lucid Leven-lies the bosom of Windermere. 'Tis a tightish swim acrossexperto crede Christophero-from the chapel-like farmhouse, half-hidden among the groves that enzone Greenbank on the eastern, to the many-windowed villa that keeps perpetually staring up into Troutbeck, on the western shore. Gazing on it from some glade in the Calgarthwoods, you might say it was the Upper Lake; for the Isle called Beautiful seems to lie across the waters from Furness-Fells to the church-tower of Bowness, and intercepts all the sweet scenery beyond the Ferry-House-though there is no danger of your forgetting it-seeing that you have got it by heart. Here then is the Mediterranean-and lo! the Mediterranean Fleet! The Grand Fleet! For seven squadrons have formed a junction-and it consists of thirty sail-all of the linethe line of peace. No shape so beautiful as the crescent -" sharpening its mooned horns." So thinks that living fleet. See how it is bending itself into Dian's bow -and gliding along too, like that celestial motion. Still liker must it seem to the eyes of the Naiads, now all looking up from their pleasant palaces through water pure as air. But you look now at the flags, and your thoughts are of the rainbow. And like the rainbow it breaks into pieces. 'Tis confusion all. No-out of momentary seeming disorder arises perfect regularity; and in two Divisions, with the NIL TIMEO and her train of barges between, ladyladen, and moving in music, the Grand Fleet is standing on, under easy sail, bound dreamward, so it is felt, for some port in Paradise. We have often promised that Maga should, in a few pages, give a guide to the Lakes. All we want to do, gentle lover of Nature, is to land you in the Region of Delight, and with a few directions, from which you will deviate as frequently and as far as you please, to send you with our blessing, like pilgrims towards her shrine among the sacred mountains. Lets us begin soberly then with WINDERMERE. For our sake, and its own, love Bowness. There is not in all the world a more cheerful old church. The tower has ceased to deplore the death of her noble pinetrees, and ever looks lovingly down on the limber larches that here and there break the line of the low laurelwreathed churchyard wall. In the heart of the lively village, pleasant is the Place of Tombs. 'Tis a village of villas. Yet the native Westmoreland cottages keep their ancient sites still, nor, entrenched within their blossoming orchards, seem to heed the gay intruders. Lo! on every knoll above and around " the Port," proud of its own peculiar architecture, a pretty edifice. We find fault with nothing there-houses nor their inhabitants-the cut of their coats, nor the shapes of their chimneystheir faces nor their figures, though some of these are droll enough; and as for the Westmoreland dialect, it wants but to be accompanied with the Scotch accent, to be the language of gods and goddesses. Pretty nymphs peep out of latticed windows and porched doors; nor could Camilla's self, had her feet been clogged like their's, have clattered more neatly across the blue-slate floors of their parlour-kitchens. 'Tis impossible to imagine any mode more elegant than their's of tying up their hair; and the maidens, with a natural gracefulness, can put on and off their large shady honnets, pink-lined and rosy-ribanded, without disarranging the snooded trefoil in its glossiness crowned mayhap with a comb of ivory; auburn, mind ye-not redfor though to vulgar eyes there is a constant confusion of these two colours, different in nature are they, as a bunch of carrots on a stall, and the glow of morn beginning to brighten the crest of the golden oak. Having strolled, but not stared, through the village, -for quiet steps should have quiet eyes, and such will see more in an hour than in a year a traveller who behaves like a surveyor of window-lights, and looks at every domicile as if he were going to tax-nay, to surcharge it-step up to the hill behind the schoolhouse, and ask your own stilled or stirred heart what it thinks of Windermere, "Wooded Winandermere, the river lake!" That is a line of our own; and we cannot help feeling, even at this distance, that it is characteristic. All the islands you see lie together, as if they loved one another, and that part of the Mere which is their birthplace. No wonder. Saw ye ever such points and promontories-capes and headlands-and, above all, such bays? In lovelier undulations lay not the lands, where "Southward through Eden went a river large," than the banks and braes of WINDERMERE, from Fell-foot to Brathay; but the spirit of beauty seems concentrated between Storrs and Calgarth, diffusing itself so as to embrace Elleray and Orerstead apart on their own happy hills, yet feeling themselves, and felt by others, to belong to the Lake on which glad would they be to fling their shadows; and sometimes they do so, for reflection and refraction are two beautiful mysteries, and we have ourselves twice seen, with our own very eyes, those happy hills, those happy houses, and those happy horses, and cows, and sheep, hanging among "all that uncertain heaven received Into the bosom of the steady Lake;" but that miracle must be rare-in all ordinary atmospheres those delightful dwellings are out of the reach of that Mirror, which seems not, in the midst of all the shadowy profusion, to miss the loveliness that would render more celestial still that evanescent world of enchantment. After Christopher North, the best guide on Windermere, unquestionably, is Billy Balmer. But Billy can not, any more than a bird, be at abov half-a-dozen places at one time; and should he happen to be at Lowood, Waterhead, the Fe Ferry, and Newbybridge, you will be in good hands should you for the day engage Tom or Jack Stevenson. There is no such thing as a bad boat on Windermere. The SNAIL herself would have been in the superlative on the pond in your "policy;" but we entreat you just to cast your eye on these wherries. You are a Cockney, we presume, and you talk of the Thames. Why, that craft there-lying on the greensward-in Mr Colinson's field yonder-with her bottom in the sunshine-for she is about to get a soaping-some call her the Nonpareil, and some the Grashopper-Billy's deaf nephew's chef d'œuvre - and he is the lad to lay a plank-if pulled by the Stewartsons, we would back for fifty against any thing at any of the Stairs, and you may take Campbell and Williams for your skulls. We remember the first Thames wherry that ever shewed her rowlocks in Bowness Bay and did not Will Garnett and ourselves give her the go-by like winking round the rock of Pull-wyke, in Cowan's Swift? But that is an old story-and the famous Swift was the precursor of a race of Rapids that now shoot like sunbeams along the Lake. If you are so fortunate as to be yet a bachelor, take a wherry or a skiff-if a Benedick, then embark with Betsy and the brats in that bumboat, and Billy, with a grave face, will pull you all away round by the back of the Great Island, and in among the small ones, requesting you with much suavity to pay particular attention to the Lily of the Valley, and ere long landing you at the Ferry-house, where he can be assisting at the tap of a new barrel, while in a family way your worthy woman and you are ascending the hill to the STATION, COvered with laurels. But 'tis unnecessary to give you any farther instructions for we perceive lying in the stern a three-year-old number of Ebony-and you have only to act over that "DAY ON WINDERMERE." We remember a man in a coach, but forget his face and name, who, of all the Lakes, asserted most strenuCONISTON. After a few miles we ously that the most beautiful was "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 mountain-dwelling, 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 long-backed 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 fifteen pence a mile, thereby shewing 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 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 crost 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 plea--and for a little while you see nought sant 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 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 long-protracted breakfast, and people moving about at labour or at leisure, an indolent and an industrious world-and lo! now that your eyes, soon familiarized 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 silvan 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 airsalas! 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 moneychar! char! char!" And you have them potted to breakfast-nay, not only pottedbut 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 break ing 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 almanack-let us see who were minis ters 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, noprint 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 forgetfulness and 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 banksbeginning 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 |