relic of a sainted martyr-suppose it were a hem of his garment-is, if one pleases so to consider it, nothing else but a piece of cloth that protected him from the winter's cold, or the summer's heat. The place where his broken and lacerated body was laid down to rest, may be accounted common earth; and the mouldering remains of a buried empire, may be accounted common dust. The Palatine hill on which stood the palace of the imperial Cæsars, and which is now covered with its ruins, may be accounted a common hill. But so do we not speak of things, nor think of them.

No, let us yield to that principle of our nature which imparts a portion of its own character to the things around us; which, with a kind of creative power, makes times, and seasons, and places to be holy; which gathers a halo of glory and beauty over our native land; which accounts the maxim devoutly true, that "there is no place like home;" and which hallows "the place where prayer is wont to be made"-which accounts no place like it-and yet so accounting it, judges that to be a good work, which makes the temples of a nation's worship strong and beautiful, for the use and admiration of successive ages.

KENDALL, JULY 29. From York, through Tadcaster, Leeds, covered with the smoke of its

VOL. I.-H

factories, Bradford, a thriving town, Keighley Skipton, &c., to Kendall—a fine country: the vales successively of the Wharf, the Aire, and the Lune.

The language the vulgar dialect, that is—of Yorkshire, and Lancashire too, is almost as unintelligible to me as Chinese. The English critics upon our barbarous Americanisms, might well reserve their comments, and as many more as they can produce, for home consumption. They are troubled with a most patronising and paternal anx iety, lest the English language should be lost among our common people; it is lost among the common people of Yorkshire. They smile at our blunders when we say sick for ill, and fine instead of nice. They say that fine comes from the milliner's shop; we might reply that nice comes from the kitchen. They are shocked when we speak of a fine building; but nothing is more common in England than to hear of the grandest old ruin in the kingdom as "a nice old place." As to the word sick, it is ours and not the English use* that accords with the standard usage of English literature: sick; afflicted with disease-is Johnson's definition.

One thing that gives this country its peculiarity

* For sickness of stomach.

of aspect as compared with ours, is the substitution of stone in all structures where we use wood--as stone houses, barns, outhouses of all sorts, stone bridges, stone watering troughs by the wayside. The smallest stream or ditch crossing the road has a stone bridge. All this gives an air of antiquity, durability, and, if I may say so, of dignity to the whole country. Another circumstance that has the same effect, is the practice of calling many of the farms from generation to generation by the same name. It is not Mr. Such or Such a one's place at least that is not the only designation-but it is Woodside, or Oakdale, or some of those unpronounceable Welsh names. I like this. It invests every dwelling in the country with local associations. It gives to every locality a dignity and interest, far beyond that of mere property or possession.

JULY 30. This morning, the finest I have seen since I landed at Liverpool, I left Kendall for Windermere. Stopped at Bowness and took a boatvisited the Station, a romantic eminence on the opposite side of the lake; then rowed up the lake eight miles to Ambleside, the head of Windermere. The head, and the views from the Station, are far the most beautiful things about the lake; and, in

deed, they are the only things very striking about it.

What a power lies in association! I was already in sight of the far famed Windermere, and almost any tract of water and landscape would have appeared lovely under such a sky--surely this didyet, as I stopped to pick a few raspberries by the hedge, that simple action-the memories that it brought with it-the thoughts of those hours of my early days, passed near my own native home -passed by those hedges, thronging ever since with a thousand inexpressible recollections-passed in the fond romance of youth, amid the holy silence of the fields and all the thick coming fancies of an unworn imagination and sensibility-all this moved me as no scene of mere abstract beauty could ever do! And yet, indeed, what is abstract? What is nature but an instrument harmonized into unison with something in us-every vibration of which either awakens or answers to some thrilling chord, in the more mysterious frame of our own being? What is the traveller but a pilgrim of the heart, the imagination, the memory? Such a little passage, now and then, as this to-day, convinces one that there is much poetry in boyhood, though one does not find it out, perhaps, till long afterward.

From Ambleside I took a pony and rode to Rydal Mount, the residence of Mr. W-.*

I was so much disappointed in the appearance of Mr. W that I actually began to suspect that I had come to the cottage of one of his neighbours. After ten minutes' commonplace talk about the weather, the travelling, &c., had passed, I determined to find out whether I was mistaken; and aware of his deep interest in the politics of England, I availed myself of some remark that was made, to introduce that subject. He immediately quit all commonplace and went into the subject with a flow, a flood almost, of conversation that soon left me in no doubt. After this had gone on

* I depart here from the rule I have laid down to myself-not to draw any details of private society into this journal-for three reasons.

The first is that the conversations which I take the liberty to quote in this place, relate principally to one of the very subjects for the discussion of which I have been tempted to publish the present volumes. The next is that the sentiments here advanced on the part of the individual referred to, are his well known sentiments so that nothing is betrayed. And the third reason is, that they are so well advanced and so ably advocated, that I think the exposition of them could not disturb or displease that distinguished person--even if such a fugitive sheet as mine should ever be wafted so far as to fall on the still and deep waters of his meditation.