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POOLEY BRIDGE, ULLSWATER. AKES are more abundant in Cumberland than in any other part of England. One of the largest and most beautiful, is that known by the name of Ullswater. It stands like a polished mirror, reflecting all the brilliancy of the surrounding objects. In the foreground is a little canonical hill called Dunmallet, covered with wood, and on whose top are some Druidical remains, intercepting the view of the northern side of the lake; on the opposite side rises the "heavy-backed" Swarth-Fell. Between its base and the lake lies a narrow slip of cultivated land, studded here and there with cottages, every one of which has its orchard or garden. In the front, Hallen Hag presents his rugged forehead, and, projecting into the lake, bounds the view of its first reach.

Over the river Eamont, which issues out of the lake to a village of the same name, runs POOLEY BRIDGE, the subject of our Vignette, which for the rusticity of its appearance, and beauty of scenery, has often proved a source of amusement to the tourist and a subject for the pencil of the painter.

The lake is scarcely a mile broad in any part of it, and and about nine miles long. Its shape is very like the letter Z; each reach about three miles long. Hallen Hag is its western boundary, at the bottom of which is the vale of Martindale, where a few inhabitants live entirely seeluded from the rest of the world; their horizon on every side consisting of mountains, within a very few miles. NO. XI.

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THE prettiest cottage on our village green is the dwelling of dame Wilson. It stands in a corner of the common, where the hedge-rows go curving off into a sort of bay, round a clean bright pond, the earliest haunt of the swallows. A deep, woody, green lane, such as Hobbima, or Ruysdael might have painted, a lane that hints of nightingales, forms one boundary of the garden, and a sloping meadow the other; whilst the cottage itself, a low thatched irregular building, backed by a blooming orchard, and covered with honeysuckle and jessamine, looks like the chosen abode of snugness and comfort. And so it is. Dame Wilson was a respected servant in a most respectable family, where she passed all the early part of her life, and which she quitted only on her marriage with a man of character and industry, and of that peculiar universality of genius which forms, what is called in country phrase, a handy fellow.' He could do any sort of work; was thatcher, carpenter, bricklayer, painter, gardener, game-keeper, every thing by turns, and nothing long!' No job came amiss to him. He killed pigs, mended shoes, cleaned clocks, doctored cows, dogs, and horses, and even went as far as bleeding and drawing teeth in his experi ments on the human subject. In addition to these multifarious talents, he was ready, obliging, and unfearing; jovial withal, and fond of good fellowship; and endowed with a promptness of resource which made him the general adviser of the stupid, the puzzled, and the timid. He was universally admitted to be the cleverest man in the parish; and his death, which happened about ten years ago, in consequence of standing in the water, drawing a pond for one neighbour, at a time when he was overheated by loading hay for another, made quite a gap in our village commonwealth. John Wilson had no rival, and has had no successor;-for the Robert Adams, whom certain younsters would fain exalt to a co-partner of fame, is simply nobody, a bell-ringer, a ballad-singer, a troller

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of a profane catches, a fiddler, a bruiser, a loller on alehouse benches, a teller of good stories, a mimic, a poet. What is all this to compare with the solid parts of John Wilson? Whose clock has Robert Adams cleaned? whose windows hath he mended? whose pigs hath he rung? whose dog hath he broken? whose pond hath he fished? whose hay hath he saved? whose cow hath he cured? whose calf hath he killed? whose teeth hath he drawn? whom hath he bled? Tell me that irrevelent whipsters. No, John Wilson is not to be replaced. He was missed by the whole parish; and most of all he was missed at home. His excellent wife was left the sole guardian and protector of two fatherless girls; one an infant on her knee, the other a pretty handy lass, about nine years old. Cast thus upon the world, there must have been much to endure, much to suffer; but it was borne with a smiling patience, a hopeful cheerfulness of spirit, and a decent pride,which seemed to command success as well as respect, in their struggle for independence. Without assistance of any sort, by needle-work, by washing and mending lace and fine linen, and other skilful and profitable labors, and by the produce of her orchard and poultry, dame Wilson contrived to maintain herself and her children in their old comfortable home. There was no visible change; she and the little girls were as neat as ever; the house had still, within and without, the same cleanliness, and the garden was still famous over all other gardens, for its cloves, and stocks, and double wall-flowers. But the sweetest flower of the garden, the joy and pride of her mother's heart, was her daughter Hannah. Well might she be proud of her. At sixteen Hannah Wilson was, beyond a doubt, the prettiest girl in the village, and the best. Her beauty was quite in a different style from the common country rose-bud-far more choice and rare. Its chief characteristic was modesty. A light youthful figure, exquisitely graceful and rapid in all its movements; springy, elastic, and buoyant as a bird, and almost as shy; a fair innocent face, with downcast blue eyes, and smiles and blushes coming and going almost with her thoughts; a low soft voice, sweet even in its monosyllables; a dress remarkable for neatness and propriety, and borrowing from her delicate beauty an air of superiority not its own; such was the outward woman of Hannah. Her mind was very like her person; modest, graceful, and generous above all. The generosity of the poor is always a very real and fine

thing; they give what they most want; and Hannah was of all poor people the most generous. She loved to give; it was her pleasure, her luxury. Rosy-cheeked apples, plums with the bloom on them, nosegays of cloves and blossomed myrtle; these were offerings which Hannah delighted to bring to those whom she loved, or those who had shown her kindnesst; whilst to others, who needed other attentions than fruit and flowers, she would give her time, her assistance, her skill; for Hannah inherited her mother's dexterity in feminine employments, with something of her father's versatile power. Beside being an excellent laundress, she was accomplished in all the arts of the needle, millinery, dress-making, and plain work; a capital cutter-out, an incomparable mender, and endowed with a gift of altering, which made old things better than new. She had no rival at resuscitaments, as half the turned gowns on the common can witness. As a dairy woman, and a rearer of pigs and poultry, she was equally successful: none of her ducks and turkeys ever died of neglect or carelessness; or, to use the phrase of the poultry yard on such occasions, of ill-luck.' Hannah's fowls never dreamed of sliding out of the world in such an ignoble way; they all lived to be killed, to make a noise at their deaths, as chickens should do. She was also a famous scholar, kept accounts, wrote bills, read letters, and answered them; was a trusty accomptant, and a safe confidant. There was no end to Haunah's usefulness, or Hannah's kindness, and her prudence was equal to either. Except to be kind or useful she never left her home; attended no fairs, or revels, or Mayings; went no where but to church, and seldom made a nearer approach to rustic revelry, than by standing at her own garden-gate on a Sunday evening, with her little sister in her hand, to look at the lads and lasses on the green. In short, our village beauty had fairly reached her twentieth year without asweetheart, without the slightest suspicion of her having ever written a love letter on her own account; when, all on a sudden, appearances changed. She was missing at the accustomed gate; and one had seen a young man go into Dame Wilson's; and another had even

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+ The real Hannah, going with a sick neighbour to the sea side; brought, on her return, her little store ofshells and sea-weed to the author, and prayed her to accept them. The offering was of course thankfully declined. Ob, do pray take them madam, pray do; you love flowers, and these seemed like the flowers of the sea. Pray take them; I thought of you all the time I was gathering them, and it was such a pleasure! There was no resisting her. Are not those shells precious.

described a trim elastic figure, walking, not unaccompanied, down the shady lane. Matters were quite clear, Hannah had gotten a lover; and when poor little Susan, who, deserted by her sister, ventured to peep rather nearer at the gay groupe, was laughingly questioned on the subject, the hesitating no, and the half yes of the smiling child, were equally conclusive. Since the new marriageact, we who belong to country magistrates, have gained a priority over the rest of the parish in matrimonial news. We (the privileged) see on a work-day the names which the Sabbath announces to the generality. Many a blushing, awkward pair, hath our little lame clerk (a sorry cupid!) ushered in between dark and light, to stammer and hacker, to bow and curtsey, to sign or make a mark, as it pleases Heaven. One Saturday, at the usual hour, the limping clerk made his appearance; and walking through our little hall, I saw a fine athletic young man, the very image of health and vigour, mental and bodily, holding the hand of a young woman, who, with her head half buried in a geranium in the window, was turning bashfully away, listening, and yet not seeming to listen, to his tender whispers. The shrinking grace of that bending figure was not to be mistaken.

"Hannah!" said I, and she went aside with me, and a rapid series of questions and answers conveyed the story of the courtship. William was' said Hannah, a journeyman hatter in B- He had walked over one Sunday evening to see the cricketing, and then he came again.' Her mother liked him; every body liked her William ;and, she had promised,-she was going, was it wrong? William has got a room in B; he works for Mr. Smith, the rich hatter in the market-place; and Mr. Smith speaks of him, ob, so well! But William will not tell me where our room is; I suppose in some narrow lane or street, which he is afraid I shall not like, as our common is so pleasant. He little thinks any where she stopped suddenly; but her blush and her clasped hands finished the sentence, any where with him.' And when is the happy day?" "On Monday fortnight, madam,' said the bridegroom elect, advancing with the little clerk to summon Hannah to the parlor, the earliest day possible.' He drew her arm through his, and we parted. The Monday fortnight was a glorious morning; one of those rare November days, when the sky and the air are soft and bright as in April. What a beautiful day for Hannah,

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