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?" The names of the chief lakes in this district are Windermere, Derwent Water or Keswick Lake, and Ullswater.

From the hilly nature of the district, there are no towns of any great size in the counties of Westmoreland and Cumberland, with the exception of Carlisle, the capital of Cumberland. Carlisle, which for ages owed its importance to its position as a fortified border town, has of late years become the centre of a most extensive railway system. The west coast railways from Scotland to England all meet in Carlisle. The station is one of the finest in Britain. In addition to coal and iron, black lead, employed in making common black lead pencils, is found in large abundance in Cumberland.

LESSON XXV.

The Lake District.

MERE beauty of scenery would not suffice to draw so many pilgrims annually to The Lakes. The district is famous in the history of our literature, and almost every spot has been made sacred by the writings of what are called the The Lake Poets. This was a name given, at first in contempt, to certain English poets, who flourished in the early part of this century, and who resided more or less by the English lakes. The three most conspicuous among these poets were, William Wordsworth, Robert Southey, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Lake Poets "took their subjects from the commonest things, and wrote their poems in the simplest style; and so spake to the world in a way to which the world was little used about things in which the world saw no poetic beauty." And so the world laughed, and thought it would laugh them down. But they were content to wait, and their patience has been rewarded, for to-day they are regarded as among the greatest, if not the greatest, of modern English poets.

The foremost among them was Wordsworth, the most of whose life was spent in this district. He was born in Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770. After studying at Cambridge, he resolved to give himself to literature, and settled down at Grasmere, among those hills "whose blue peaks had bounded the world of his childhood." In 1813, he removed to Rydal Mount, "lying in sight of those sweet lakes and under the shadow of those old hills, which have become inseparably associated with his name and memory. At Rydal Mount, a cottage-like building, almost hidden by a profusion of roses and ivy, from whose grassy lawn a silver gleam of Windermere could be caught to the south, the poet spent the greater half of his life." He died a few days after the completion of his eightieth year, 23rd April, 1850. His remains were laid in the churchyard of Grasmere.

Southey, born in 1774, fixed his residence in 1804 on the banks of the Greta, near Keswick, in the heart of the Lake country, where he continued to reside until his death on the 21st March, 1843. Coleridge was a frequent visitor in the district, and so were many others, men of renown in their day, but whose names are not so well known now.

These poets, particularly Wordsworth, have made all this district a sort of holy ground. There is scarcely a valley, river, or lake, on which Wordsworth has not written something. If you open his poems at random, you are

almost certain to find some reference to some spot in the Lake country. Wordsworth has done for Westmoreland and Cumberland what Sir Walter Scott has done for many parts of Scotland; and the thousands who every year go to the Lakes are drawn there not more by the beauty of the scenery than by the charm attached to Wordsworth's name.

LESSON XXVI.

Northumberland-Durham-Coalfield.

TURN once more to the map, and take a look at the counties of Northumberland and Durham. You will remember what you have been told regarding the watershed of a country, and the direction in which the streams flow. Examine the rivers in these two counties and you will see that almost the whole of them flow eastward and fall into the German Ocean. The three principal rivers are the Tyne, the Wear, and the Tees. Their general direction is easterly-bending some times to the north, some times to the south, according to the lie of the land, but always making for the east.

From the river Coquet on the north nearly to the Tees on the south extends the great Northumberland and Durham coal field. It is intersected by two navigable riversthe Tyne and the Wear. It is about fifty miles in length, by twenty-two miles in breadth, stretching that distance inland from the coast. The coal is reached at very varying depths from the surface, some of the seams being 1200 feet below the surface, while others are not more than forty feet. The tract supplies the two counties in which it is situated, contiguous parts of Scotland, the whole of the eastern and southern coasts of England as far as Cornwall, including London, and the export to foreign parts is also

very extensive. The chief shipping ports for the coal of this district are Newcastle, Shields, and Sunderland.

For many ages, the chief supply of fuel in England was obtained from the immense forests that existed in many parts of the country, and there was no necessity for using coal as fuel. But when agriculture began to be studied, and the woods were cleared away, men began to turn their attention to coal. Accordingly, we find that the working of coal as an article of commerce does not appear to have commenced until the end of the twelfth century. The first charter granting liberty to the town of Newcastle to dig coals was granted by Henry III. in the year 1239. It was then called sea-coal, on account of its being carried by sea to distant places. At the commencement of the London coal trade, two ships were sufficient for the business. Now the collier brigs are to be reckoned by the thousand. The working of coal continued on a limited scale until the beginning of last century, when the first made steam engine was applied to collieries in the vicinity of Newcastle in 1715. This machine produced a new era in the coal trade. Collieries were opened in every quarter; and, when Watt had perfected the steam engine, England, from its abundant supply of coal, became the first commercial country in the world.

To show you the rapid changes which have been produced by the growth of the coal trade, we may mention Middlesborough, which, though situated in Yorkshire, is connected with this coal district. In 1829, the site of Middlesborough was occupied by a solitary farm house. A railway was at that date being made between Stockton and Darlington-the first railway opened in England-and some of the persons connected with the railway noticed that Middlesborough was better fitted for loading colliers and making docks than Stockton. They, accordingly, bought

land at Middlesborough, intending to make it the terminus of the railway. The railway was opened in 1830, and very soon Middlesborough became a busy coal port. In 1842, the population was upwards of 4000, and in 1851 upwards of 7000. Since that time, the district has been found to be one of the richest in iron ore in the kingdom, and at the present day about one-fourth of all the iron ore raised in England is furnished from the mines in the vicinity of Middlesborough. The population of the town is now estimated to be about 40,000. The "black diamond," as coal is sometimes called, has been of more service to England than gold or silver mines would have been.

There are few inland towns in Northumberland and Durham of any great size, or of much importance. The leading commercial towns are all on the coast. Durham, the capital of the county of that name, is a cathedral city, and has a castle, built by William the Conqueror, which is now occupied by Durham University, which was opened in 1833, and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1837.

LESSON XXVII.

Yorkshire.

TAKE a look at the great county of Yorkshire, by far the largest county in England. You cannot fail to observe that the rivers in this county, while finding their way into the North Sea, do so in a generally south-eastern or southwestern direction, differing in this respect from the rivers in Northumberland and Durham. If you examine the

map, you will find no stream of any consequence running into the North Sea between the Tees and the Humber. Nay, the Derwent, you will observe, rises at no great distance from the sea near Scarborough, but it flows inland