shadow of his memory still dwell those dearest on earth to his beatified spirit. So pass along in high and solemn thought, till you lose sight of Calgarth in the lone-road that leads by St. Catherines, and then relapse into pleasant fancies and picturesque dreams. This is the best way by far of approaching Troutbeck. No ups and downs in this life were ever more enlivening -not even the ups and downs of a bird learning to fly. Sheep-fences, seven feet high, are admirable contrivances for shutting out scenery; and by shutting out much scenery, why, you confer an unappreciable value on the little that remains visible, and feel as if you could hug it to your heart. But sometimes one does feel tempted to shove down a few roods of intercepting stone-wall higher than the horse-hair on a cuirassier's casque-though sheep should eat the suckers and scions, protected as they there shoot, at the price of the concealment of the picturesque and the poetical from beauty-searching eyes. That is a long lane, it is said, which has never a turning; so, this must be a short one, which has a hundred. You have turned your back on Windermere-and our advice to you is, to keep your face to the mountains. Troutbeck is a jewel -a diamond of a stream-but Bobbin-mills have exhausted some of the most lustrous pools, changing them into shallows, where the minnows rove. Deep dells are his delight-and he loves the rugged scaurs that intrench his wooded banks-and the fantastic rocks that tower-like hang at intervals over his winding course, and seem sometimes to block it up-but the miner works his way out beneath galleries and arches in the living stone sometimes silent-sometimes singing and sometimes roaring like thunder-till subsiding into a placid spirit, ere he reaches the woodenbridge in the bonny holms of Calgarth, he glides graceful as the swan that sometimes sees its image

in his breast, and through alder and willow banks murmurs away his life in the Lake.

Yes that is Troutbeck Chapel one of the smallest-and to our eyes the very simplest-of all the chapels among the hills. Yet will it be remembered when more pretending edifices are forgottenjust like some mild, sensible, but perhaps somewhat too silent per son, whose acquaintanceship-nay, friendship-we feel a wish to cultivate-we scarce know why-except that he is mild, sensible, and silent

whereas we would not be civil to the brusque, upsetting, and loquacious puppy at his elbow, whose information is as various as it is profound, were one word or look of courtesy to save him from the flames. For heaven's sake, Louisa, don't sketch Troutbeck Chapel ! There is nothing but a square tower-a horizontal roof—and some perpendicular walls. The outlines of the mountains here have no specific character. That bridge is but a poor feature-and the stream here very common-place. Put them not on paper. Yet alive-is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here-in this utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil-and as the bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled heart whispers to itself" this is peace!"

The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your Troutbeck statesmen are the most litigious and most quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath in all the parish that has not cost a hundred pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant stile is referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the Quarter Sessions.

No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a marchwall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a frost

loosened stone tumble from some skrees down upon a neighbor's field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and ears to fee rascally attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go to the land-sharks and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields, will sue for something or another in formâ pauperis, were it but the worthless wood and secondhand nails that may be destined for his coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life-but we must take pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were every whit as bad in the time of the Patriarchs-else, whence the satirical sneer, "sham Abraham ? " Yonder is the Village straggling away up along the hillside, till the farthest house seems a rock fallen with trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in clusters of twos or threes-with here and there what in Scotland we should call a clachan-many a sma' toun within the ae long toun-but where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would have wished to plant them, on knolls, and in dells, and on banks and braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in picturesque confusion, by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides?

If you have no objections-our pretty dears-we shall return to Bowness by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march-so that we may one and all indulge in our own silent fancies-and let not a word be spoken-virgins-under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable-till we crown the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already and we hear our musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his cottage, the head and shoulders of

Windermere are seen in their most majestic shape-and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, Gorgeousland," to gaze on which for an hour might almost make a Sewell Stokes a Poetaster. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round-and despises the twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down-from head to foot-from the Brathay to the Leven-of the proper breadth precisely-to a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay-on which the birds love to balance themselves-at low or high water, to be visibly longer or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such occasions, since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our skiff from the Endeavor,-the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be impaired-so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of its silvan shores! True, there are flaws in the diamond-but only when the squalls come-and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue, as an angel's eyes. Lowood Bay-we are now embarked in Mr. Jackson's prettiest pinnace-when the sun is westeringwhich it now is-surpasses all other bays in fresh-water Mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that serencst mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible-but sure she never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in that truest of all glasses, set in the chastest of all rich frames. Pleased she retires

with a wavering motion-and casting "many a longing, lingering look behind "-fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger-we really know not which takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with

voice was once heard, and whose footsteps once wandered among the flowers of this earth. But it is a mistake to believe that such beauty as this can visit the soul only after the original in which it once breathed is dead. For as it can only be seen by profoundest passion-and the profoundest are the passions of Love, and Pity, and Grief-why may not each and all of these passionswhen we consider the constitution of this world and this life-be awakened in their utmost height and depth by the sight of living beauty, as well as by the memory of the dead? To do so is surely within "the reachings of our souls,"-and if so, then may the virgin beauty of his daughter, praying with folded hands and heavenward face when leaning in health on her father's knees, transcend even the ideal beauty which shall afterwards visit his slumbers nightly, long years after he has laid her head in the grave. If by ideal beauty, you mean a beauty beyond what ever breathed and moved, and had its being on earth-then we suspect that not even "that inner eye which is the bliss of solitude" ever beheld it; but if you merely mean by ideal beauty, that which is composed of ideas, and of the feelings attached by nature to ideas, then, begging your pardon, my good sir, all beauty whatever is ideal-and you had better begin to study metaphysics.

But what we were wishing to say is this that whatever may be the truth with regard to human female beauty-Windermere, seen by sunset from the spot where we now stand, Elleray, is at this moment the most beautiful scene on this earth. The reasons why it must be so are multitudinous. Not only can the eye take in, but the imagination, in its awakened power, can master all the component elements of the spectacle-and while it adequately discerns and sufficiently feels the influence of each, is alive throughout all its essence to the divine agency of the whole. The

But almost in

charm lies in its entirety-its unity, which is so perfect-so seemeth it to our eyes-that 'tis in itself a complete world-of which not a line could be altered without disturbing the spirit of beauty that lies recumbent there, wherever the earth meets the sky. There is nothing here fragmentary; and had a poet been born, and bred here all his days, nor known aught of fair or grand beyond this liquid vale, yet had he sung truly and profoundly of the shows of nature. No rude and shapeless masses of mountainssuch as too often in our own dear Scotland encumber the earth with dreary desolation-with gloom without grandeur-and magnitude without magnificence. orderly array, and irregular just up to the point of the picturesque, where poetry is not needed for the fancy's pleasure, stand the Race of Giants--mist-veiled transparentlyor crowned with clouds slowly settling of their own accord into all the forms that Beauty loves, when with her sister-spirit Peace she descends at eve from highest heaven to sleep among the shades of earth. Sweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and skies, were it not so solemn ! The silence is that of a temple, and, as we face the west, irresistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun occupies with his flaming retinue all the region. Mighty yet mildfor from his disk awhile insufferably bright, is effused now a gentle crimson light, that dyes all the west in one uniform glory, save where yet round the cloud-edges lingers the purple, the green, and the yellow lustre, unwilling to forsake the violet beds of the sky, changing, while we gaze, into heavenly roses; till that prevailing crimson color at last gains entire possession of the heavens, and all the previous splendor gives way to one glory, whose paramount purity, lustrous as fire, is in its steadfast beauty sublime. And, lo! the lake has received that sunset into its bosom! It, too, softly burns with a crimson glow-and

as sinks the sun below the mountains, Windermere, gorgeous in her array as the Western sky, keeps fade-fading away as it fades, till at last all the ineffable splendor expires, and the spirit that has been lost to this world in the transcendant vision, or has been seeing all things appertaining to this world in visionary symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretofore, to walk wearicdly, perhaps, and wobegone, over the no longer divine but disenchanted earth!

It is very kind in the moon and stars-just like them-to rise so soon after sunset. The heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a characterless night succeeds such a blaze of light -like dull reality dashing the last vestiges of the brightest of dreams. When the moon is "hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a star can "burst its cerements," in the dim blank Imagination droops her wings-our thoughts become of the earth earthy-and poetry seems a pastime fit but for fools and children. But how different our mood, when "Glows the firmament with living sapphire!"

and Diana, who has ascended high in heaven, without our having ever once observed the divinity, bends her silver bow among the rejoicing stars, while the lake, like another sky, seems to contain its own luminaries, a different division of the constellated night! 'Tis merry Windermere no more! Yet we must not call her melancholy-though somewhat sad she seems, and pensive, as if the stillness of universal nature did touch her heart. How serene all the lights-how peaceful all the shadows! Steadfast alike—as if there they would brood foreveryet transient as all loveliness-and at the mercy of every cloud! In some places, the lake has disappeared-in others the moonlight is almost like sunshine-only silver instead of gold! Here spots of quiet light-there lines of trembling lustre

and there a flood of radiance che

quered by the images of trees! Lo! the Isle called Beautiful has now gathered upon its central grove all the radiance issuing from that celestial Urn! And almost in another. moment it seems blended with the dim mass of mainland, and blackness enshrouds the woods. Still as seems the night to unobservant eyes, it is fluctuating in its expression as the face of a sleeper overspread with pleasant but disturbing dreams. Never for any two successive moments is the aspect of the night the same each smile has its own meaning, its own character-and Light is felt to be like Music, to have a melody and a harmony of its own-so mysteriously allied are the powers and provinces of eye and ear, and by such a kindred and congenial agency do they administer to the workings of the spirit.

Well, that is very extraordinaryRain-rain-rain! All the eyes of heaven were bright as bright might be-the sky was blue as violetsthat braided whiteness, that here and there floated like a veil on the brow of night, was all that recalled the memory of clouds-and as for the moon, no faintest halo yellowed round her orb that seemed indeed

one perfect chrysolite; "-yet while all the winds seemed laid asleep till morn, and beauty to have chained all the elements into

peace

overcast in a moment is the firmament-an evanishing has left it blank as mist-there is a fast, thick, pattering on the woods-yes-rain

reach

rain-rain-and ere we Bowness the party will be wet through to their skins. Nay-matters are getting still more serious

for there was lightning-lightning! Ten seconds! and hark, very respectable thunder! With all our wisdom we have not been weather-wise-or we should have known-when we saw it-an electrical sunset. Only look now towards the west. There floats Noah's Ark-a magnificent spectacle

and now for the Flood. That faroff sullen sound is the sound of cata