perfection of art. All this, indeed, was familiar to me; the colouring only was new. I had been there in early spring, when the fragrant palms were on the willow, and the yellow tassels on the hazel, and every twig was swelling with renewed life; and I had been there again and again in the green leafiness of midsummer; but never as now, when the dark verdure of the fir plantations, hanging over the picturesque and unequal paling, partly covered with moss and ivy, contrasts so remarkably with the shining orange leaves of the beech, already half fallen, the pale yellow of the scattering elm, the deeper and richer tints of the oak, and the glossy stems of the 'lady of the woods,' the delicate weeping birch.

The underwood is no less picturesque. The red-spotted leaves, and redder berries of the old thorns, the scarlet festoons of the bramble, the tall ferns of every hue, seem to vie with the brilliant mosaic of the ground, now covered with dead leaves and strewn with fir-cones, now, where a little glade intervenes, gay with various mosses and splendid fungi.

How beautiful is this coppice to-day! especially where the little spring, as clear as crystal, comes bubbling out from the 'old fantastic' beech root, and trickles over the grass, bright and silent as the dew in a May morning. The wood-pigeons (who are just returned from their summer migrations, and are cropping the ivy berries) add their low cooings, the very note of love, to the slight fluttering of the falling leaves in the quiet air, giving a voice to the sunshine and the beauty. The coppice is a place to live and die in. But we must go. And how fine is the ascent which leads us again into the world, past those cottages hidden in a pit, and by that hanging orchard and that rough heathy bank! The scenery in this one spot has a wildness, an abruptness of rise and fall, rare in any part of England, rare above all in this rich and lovely but monotonous county. It is Switzerland in miniature.

MISS MITFORD.

ULLESWATER.

OCT. 1.—A grey autumnal day, the air perfectly calm and mild. I went to see Ulleswater, five miles distant from Penrith. I soon left the Keswick road, and turned to the left through shady lanes along the vale of Eamont, which runs rapidly on near the way, rippling over the stones. To the right is Delmaine, a large fabric of pale red stone, behind it a fine lawn surrounded by woods, and a long rocky eminence rising over them; a clear and brisk rivulet runs by the house to join the Eamont, whose course is in sight and at a small distance. I next approached Dunmallert, a finepointed hill covered with wood; walked over a spungy meadow or two, and began to mount the hill through a broad, straight, green alley among the trees, and with some toil gained the summit. From hence I saw the lake opening directly at my feet, majestic in its calmness, clear and smooth as a blue mirror, with winding shores and low points of land covered with green enclosures, white farm-houses looking out among the trees, and cattle feeding. The water is almost everywhere bordered with cultivated lands, gently sloping upwards from a mile to a quarter of a mile in breadth, till they reach the foot of the mountains, which rise very rude and awful with their broken tops on either hand. Directly in front, at better than four miles' distance, Place Fell, one of the bravest among them, pushes its bold, broad breast into the midst of the lake, and forces it to alter its course, forming first a large bay to the left, and then bending to the right.

I descended Dunmallert again by a side avenue that was nearly perpendicular, and came to Barton Bridge over the Eamont; then walking through a path in the wood round the bottom of the hill, came forth where the Eamont issues out of the lake, and continued my way along its western shore close to the water and generally on a level with it.

The

lake is nine miles long, and at widest under a mile in breadth. After extending itself three miles and a half in a line to the south-west, it turns at the foot of Place Fell almost due west, and is here not twice the breadth of the Thames at London. It is soon again interrupted by the roots of Helvellyn, a very lofty and rugged mountain, and spreading again turns off to the south-east and is lost among the recesses of the hills. To this second turning I pursued my way about four miles along its borders beyond a village scattered among the trees, and called Watermillock, in a pleasant grave day, perfectly calm and warm, but without a gleam of sunshine; then the sky seeming to thicken, and the valley to grow more desolate, and evening drawing on, I returned, by the way I came, to Penrith.

T. GRAY.

HELVELLYN.

I CLIMBED the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,
Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide;
All was still save by fits, when the eagle was yelling,

And starting around me the echoes replied.

On the right, Striden-edge round the Red-tarn was bending, And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,

One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,

When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died.

Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather,
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay,
Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather
Till the mountain-winds wasted the tenantless clay.
Nor yet quite deserted, though lonely extended,
For, faithful in death, his mute favourite attended,
The much-loved remains of her master defended,
And chased the hill-fox and the raven away.

How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber? When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start?

How many long days and long weeks didst thou number,
Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart?
And, oh! was it meet, that—no requiem read o'er him—
No mother to weep, and no friend to deplore him,
And thou, little guardian, alone stretched before him—
Unhonoured the pilgrim from life should depart?

When a prince to the fate of the peasant has yielded,
The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall;
With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,

And pages stand mute by the canopied hall :

Through the courts, at deep midnight, the torches are gleaming;

In the proudly-arched chapel the banners are beaming;
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.

But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,

To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb,
When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge in stature,
And draws his last sob by the side of his dam.

And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying,
Thy obsequies sung by the grey plover flying,

With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.

SIR W. SCOTT.

DERWENTWATER AND BORROWDALE.

OCT. 3, 1769.—A heavenly day; I rose at seven and walked out under the conduct of my landlord to Borrowdale; the grass was covered with a hoar-frost which soon melted and exhaled in a thin bluish smoke; I crossed the meadows,