After half an hour's loitering in the birch-woods, and half an hour's reclining on the mossy bank, while a couple of hatless urchins tend the ponies, cropping a welcome meal by the road-side, you will not grudge to return to Skelwith Bridge, and so on for an up-and-down romantic mile to Colwith Force, one of the finest of the Westmoreland waterfalls. By a little scrambling, you may get through the underwood, not far above the level of the channel, to a point where the cataract is seen in all its height and breadth, with a noble background of mountains. Thence to Angle Tarn in Little Langdale, the road winds through pleasant thickets, with not much to be seen by heedless or uninstructed eyes; but to those who know how to see and study the character of a country, full of unobtrusive and expressive features, that smile upon you for a moment, and disappear in varied succession. You must not, at present, think of ascending HardKnot and Wrynose, for that road (traversed of yore by hundreds of pack-horses every year) would lead you away over to Eskdale, and down to the shores of the sea; but keeping the ancient building of Fellfoot, embowered in trees, to your left, turn to the right, and, after a short bleak distance, you will behold Blea Tarn, a lonely, and if in nature there be any thing of that character, a melancholy depth of water! It is thus finely described in Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion, as the abode of his Solitary:

Urnlike it is in shape-deep as an urn;

With rocks encompass'd, save that to the south
In one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplies a boundary less abrupt and close,
A quiet treeless nook, with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glitters in the sun,

And one bare dwelling;-one abode-no more!
It seems the house of poverty and toil,

Though not of want. The little fields made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,

Pay cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
There crows that cock, single in his domain;
The small birds find in spring no thicket there
To shroud them; only from the neighbouring vales
The cuckoo, straggling up to the hill-top,
Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place.

Ah! what a sweet recess, thought I, is here!
Instantly throwing down my limbs at ease
Upon a bed of heath ;-full many a spot
Of hidden beauty have I chanced to espy
Among the mountains-never one like this!
So lonesome and so perfectly secure :
Not melancholy-no, for it is green,
And bright, and fertile; furnish'd in itself
With the few needful things which life requires.

In rugged arms how soft it seems to lie,
How tenderly protected! Far and near
We have an image of the pristine earth,
The planet in its nakedness. Were this
Man's only dwelling, sole appointed seat,
First, last, and single, in this breathing world,
It could not be more quiet: peace is here,
Or nowhere; days unruffled by the gale
Of public news or private; years that pass
Forgetfully; uncall'd upon to pay

The common penalties of mortal life,
Sickness or accident, or grief or pain!

"What!" methinks we hear a voice exclaim-" Is that a description of bare, dull, dreary, moorland Blea-Pond, where a man and a Christian would die through mere blank vacancy, and weary want of world, of eye, and ear!" Hush, critic, hush! forget ye that there are sermons in stones, and good in every thing? In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if his imagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over the objects of the inanimate world? Nay, even the naked truth itself is seen clearly but by poetic eyes; and wert thou all at once to become a poet, thou wouldst absolutely shed tears over the guilt of that Vandalism"Blea Pond." Yonder ass licking his lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at Lowood-Inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment pauses with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand. The waiter, who has cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their phraseology, and declares the sunset to be exceedingly handsome. The Laker, who sometimes has a soul, feels

it rise within him, as the rim of the orb disappears in the glow of softened fire. The artist compliments Nature, by likening her evening glories to a picture in Claude Lorraine-while the poet feels the sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Do you know, we really form a very picturesque and gipsy-looking group, half-hidden in brackens on the side of this rock-crowned knoll. Now, these parasols might be supposed to be the green tents of the fairies. Ladyloves! never looked ye more beautiful. And how appro priately these long-maned mountain-ponies are cropping the short herbage of the wild? Long Jonathan throws a noble shadow-and the croak of the Blea Tarn raven is sublime. Let us recline here a few minutes longer-and you shall hear a Tale.

The house now in ruins, that we passed a few hundred yards ago, among some dark firs, just before we began to ascend the hill, was some years ago inhabited by Miles Mackareth, a man of some substance, and universally esteemed for his honest and pious character. His integrity, however, wanted the grace of courteousness, and his religion was somewhat gloomy and austere, while all the habits of his life were sad, secluded, and solitary. His fireside was always decent, but never cheerful-there the passing traveller partook of an ungrudging, but a grave hospitality-and although neighbours dropping in unasked were always treated as neighbours, yet seldom were they invited to pass an evening below his roof, except upon the stated festivals of the seasons, or some domestic event demanding sociality, according to the country custom. Year after year the gloom deepened on his strong-marked intellectual countenance; and his hair, once black as jet, became untimely gray. Indeed, although little more than fifty years old, when you saw

his head uncovered, you would have taken him for a man approaching to threescore and ten. His wife and only daughter, both naturally of a cheerful disposition, grew every year more retired, till at last they shunned society altogether, and were seldom seen but at church. And now a vague rumour ran through the hamlets of the neighbouring valleys, that Miles Mackareth was scarcely in his right mind-that he had been heard by shepherds on the hills talking to himself wild words, and pacing up and down in a state of distraction. The family ceased to attend divine worship, and as for some time the Sabbath had been the only day they were visible, few or none now knew how they fared, and by many they were utterly forgotten. Meanwhile, during the whole summer, the miserable man haunted the loneliest places; and, to the terror of his wife and daughter, who had lost all power over him, and durst not speak, frequently passed whole days they knew not where, and came home, silent, haggard, and ghastly, about midnight. His widow afterwards told, that he seldom slept, and never without dreadful dreams that often, often would he sit up all night in his bed, with eyes fixed and staring on nothing, and uttering ejaculations for mercy for all his sins.

What these sins were he never confessed-nor, as far as man may judge of man, had he ever committed any act that needed to lie heavy on his conscience. But his whole being, he said, was one black sin-and a spirit had been sent to tell him, that his doom was to be with the wicked through all the ages of eternity. That spirit, without form or shadow-only a voice-seldom left his side day or night, go where he would; but its most dreadful haunt was under a steep rock called Blake-rigg-scaur (you hear the raven now upon it); and thither, in whatever direction he turned his face on leaving his own door, he was led by an irresistible impulse, even as a child is led by the hand. Tenderly and truly had he once loved his wife and daughter, nor less because that love had been of few words, silent, and with a shade of sorrow. But now he looked on them almost as if they had been strangers-except at times, when he started up, kissed them, and wept. His whole soul was possessed by hor

rid fantasies, of which it was itself object and victim; and it is probable, that had he seen them both lying dead, he would have left their corpses in the house, and taken his way to the mountains. At last one night passed away and he came not. His wife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest house and told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all the loneliest places-till a hat was seen floating on Blea Tarn, and then all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got from the fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarn on its miserable quest, till in an hour, during which wife and daughter sat without speaking on a stone by the water-edge, the body came floating to the surface, with its long silver hair. One single shriek only, it is said, was heard, and from that shriek till three years afterwards, his widow knew not that her husband was with the dead. On the brink of that small sandy bay the body was laid down and cleansed of the muddy weeds-his daughter's own hands assisting in the rueful work-and she walked among the mourners, the day before the Sabbath, when the funeral entered the little burial-ground of Langdale chapel, and the congregation sung a Christian psalm over the grave of the forgiven suicide !

But whom have we here, perched upon a knoll, and each sitting upon a tripod, or three-legged stool?—A brace of artists; and doubtless they have been sketching the party all the time of this doleful story. Time was when the lake-country swarmed with gentlemen of the profession. You could not stoop down to take a drink out of a well by the wayside, without being instantly clapped into the foreground of a landscape intended for the London Exhibition of Water-Colour Paintings. If your coat was not of the right colour, it was changed in a jiffy into red or purple, to harmonise with the setting A boundless hat was put on your head, composed of most extraordinary materials; and a pretty tatterdemallion you were made of by the edge of the silver fountain. Many of these artists being Cockneys, had never seen a mountain in all their days; nor any other mist than one shrouding from view the City of London Tavern.

sun.