fie-fieish, you think-and in danger of becom- | Hebrew Melody! And now your heart feels ing very, very faux-pa-pa-ish! the utter mournfulness of these words, "Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old," whose mind-motto was still “Honi soit qui mal y pense!'' Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but be not terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in your censure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitively sensitive modesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not have suffered the Guiccioli, while would not have suffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulged in even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only where it is not-and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them openarmed, bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more like the hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkish modesty and mouthing morality-for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite. Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole Circling Flight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see the realization of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours "Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance, Lead on the eternal spring! But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the Instrumental Band is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for, blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE-So call we her who is our heart'sease and heart's-delight-the granddaughter of one whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturned passion-but "By Babel's streams we sat and wept!" How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings! Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soul that sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistance to her sway, but yields itled captive by each successive strain through up entire to all its moods and measures, the whole mysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush. Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh self almost a sob-is heard, and there is shedding she felt all alone at some solitary shrine— of tears. The sweet singer's self seems as if "Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!" Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion! How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity to all who have roofs over-head-towards the houseless and them who huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets must have been a Godsend indeed to not a few families, Yet that is good too-nor do we find fault with and your plan is preferable to a Fancy-Fair. them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give relief to miseryand the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the poor. Again what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows, and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the Night be about? and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has "The course of true love never yet ran smooth”— comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathed whisperingly into her ear-driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our a rare feature when small, thin, and delicate as a leaf-just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almost stateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that would have charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the hand of a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motions of those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the strings accordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with St. Cecilia's in her hymning orisons. A noddle-and to-morrow we must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power, of King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not-though Ultra-Trimmers try to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuse, the devil, and the Chartists. STROLL TO GRASSMERE. FIRST SAUNTER. yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man of the Mountains ;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we know some guages of calm and storm. Remember that we are now at Ambleside-and one week's residence there may let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of St. Cloud. COMPANION of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather of our island-what more than the vocabulary of the lanclime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on the barometrical scale. The One advice we give you, and by following it idea of trusting, throughout all the fluctuations you cannot fail to be happy at Ambleside, and of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, which we live, to quicksilver, is indeed pre- love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that posterous; and we have long noticed that you would not change it for the atmosphere of meteorologists make an early figure in our a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be obituaries. Seeing the head of the god above thankful for the faint air that comes down fitthe mark "fair," or "settled," out they march | fully from cliff and chasm, or the breeze that in thins, without great-coat or umbrella, whenever and anon gushes from stream and lake. such a thunder-plump falls down in a deluge, If the heavens are filled with sunshine, and that, returning home by water and steam, they you feel the vanity of parasols, how cool the take to bed, and on the ninth day fever hurries silvan shade for ever moistened by the murthem off, victims to their confidence in that murs of that fairy waterfall! Should it blow treacherous tube. But we mean to ask, have great guns, cannot you take shelter in yonder you an eye, an ear, and a sixth sense, anony- magnificent fort, whose hanging battlements mous and instinctive, for all the prognosticat- are warded even from the thunder-bolt by the ing sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, dense umbrage of unviolated woods? Rainof nature? Have you studied, in silence and rain-rain-an even-down pour of rain, that | solitude, the low, strange, and spirit-like whis- forces upon you visions of Noah and his ark, perings, that often, when bird and bee are and the top of Mount Ararat-still, we beseech mute, come and go, here and there, now from you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; crag, now from coppice, and now from moor, the thing is impossible. Even this very afterall over the sultry stillness of the clouded land- noon will the rainbow span the blue entrance scape? Have you listened among mountains into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westerto the voice of streams, till you heard them ing sun on his approach to the mountainsprophesying change? Have you so mastered and a hundred hill-born torrents will be seen the occult science of mists, as that you can flashing out of the up-folding mists. What a foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the delightful dazzle on the light-stricken river! hour when grove, precipice, or plain, shall in Each meadow shames the lustre of the emsudden revelation be clothed with the pomp oferald; and the soul wishes not for language sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishes visible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? And know ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Are the Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac! When a mile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loads every tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as when one raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenly off with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the lofty distance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonely lichen brighten or Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for havpale its lustre with change? Does not the gifting overslept the assignation hour, and allowed of prophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? The prescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms when the heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirsty for wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, is beginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in the blue of a midsummer's meridian day? to speak the pomp and prodigality of colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdled Fairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest. You will not imagine, from any thing we have ever said, that we are enemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embrace the new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At such hour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in the world. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdues every thing to itself, and life is love. thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairest phantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us― for not clouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead; the unreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us-a loving murmur steals into our heart from thine--and pure as a child's, daughter of Heaven! is thy Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Per-breath. haps you are weather-wiser than ourselves; In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea of morning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of common day"—the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during the night-enough, and no more, to enliven nature-the mists are ascending composedly with promise of gentle weather-and the sun, so mild that we can look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as he has risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace. pretty little silvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside, and Rydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucid waters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from the fair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgrace its fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, will recall the green forestglades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industrious creature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. All thoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise and sunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou well dost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Him brings health, food, and sleep to the innocent. that helps to eke out her own subsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by the solitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleray never left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it-never entered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small, lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of old songs-as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairy-land? She is Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her soliremarkable, that, to the best of our memory, tude. Do you wish for a flowery bracelet for never once were we the very first out into the the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes may dawn. We say nothing of birds-for they, mingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it, and beauty? The orphan of Wood-edge will wreath from their bed on the bough feel the forerun-it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted ning warmth of the sunrise; neither do we the dew on leaf or petal. Will you be for carallude to hares, for they are hirpling hame,"rying away with you to the far-off city some to sleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in the centre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse being up before us, for they have bivouacked; and the latter, as they often sleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardon for running across the road before us, and as they reach the hole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awake for hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite at chanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowing hours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not the first sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud already hovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying to our pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from the dust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her last night's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity, at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleeping on her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion of the Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, is mortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are a Christian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool, on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till his creel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuing like a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet, little Alice Elleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphan beauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in the woods. Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for a creature onehalf so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a home that wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there are few or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon its ringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth, and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon faded away of a broken heart; and who was to care for the orphan child of the forgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcely distinguishable from the sheilings of the charcoal-burners, was glad to take her from the parish for a weekly mite Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, Alice Elleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden, trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in its cheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close of the song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze of tears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over the greensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by her beauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, who blesses her with the uplifting of withered hands. Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force. There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to our liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till your head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door-we are speaking to you, sir-and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray as if you had fallen out of a boat-and descend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slides and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foambells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuse a headache have you-speak in a whis- | from afar, all happy as at home in the Fairies' per, and not a syllable of your excellent obser- Oak. vation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops have been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat-and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the county. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any other waterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilizing showers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work a thousand additional feeders to every Lake. Ha! Matutine Roses!-budding, half-blown, consummate-you are, indeed, in irresistible blush! We shall not say which of you we love best-she knows it; but we see there is no hope to-day for the old man-for you are all paired-and he must trudge it solus, in capacity of Guide-General of the Forces. What! the nymphs are going to pony it? And you intend, you selfish fellows, that we shall hold all the reins whenever the spirit moveth you to deviate from bridle-path, to clamber cliff for a bird's-eye view, or dive into dells for some rare plant? Well, well-there is a tradition, that once we were young ourselves; and so redolent of youth are these hills, that we are more than half inclined to believe it--so blush and titter, and laugh and look down, ye innocent wicked ones, each with her squire by her palfrey's name, while good old Christopher, like a true guide, keeps hobbling in the rear on his Crutch. Holla there!-to the right of our friend Mr. Benson's smithy-and to Rothaybridge. Turn in at a gate to the right hand, which, twenty to one, you will find open, that the cattle may take an occasional promenade along the turnpike, and cool their palates with a little ditch grass, and saunter along by Millar-bridge and Foxgill on to Pelter-bridge, and, if you please, to Rydal-mere. Thus, and thus only, is seen the vale of Ambleside; and what a vale of grove, and glade, and stream, and cliff, and cottage, and villa, and grass-field, and garden, and orchard, and-But not another word, for you would forthwith compare our description with the reality, and seeing it faint and feeble, would toss it into the Rothay, and laugh as the Vol. plumped over a waterfall! The silvan-or say rather the forest scenery -(for there is to us an indescribable difference between these two words)-of Rydalpark, was, in memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasure of old trees. Lady Diana's white pea-fowl, sitting on the limbs of that huge old tree like creatures newly alighted from the Isles of Paradise! all undisturbed by the water-falls, which, as you keep gazing on the long-depending plumage illumining the forest-gloom, seem indeed to lose their sound, and to partake the peace of that resplendent show-each splendour a wondrous Bird! For they stretch themselves all up, with their graceful crests, o'ercanopied by the umbrage draperied as from a throne. And never surely were seen in this daylight world such unterrestrial creatures-though come By all means ride away into these woods, and lose yourselves for half an hour among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startled blackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless slow-worm among the last year's red beech-leaves. No very great harm in a kiss under the shadow of an oak, (oh fie!) while the magpie chatters angrily at safe distance, and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the canopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the loftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is a glimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming with bees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by your dream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of wooded cliffs, and you are led to a Water-fall. Five minutes are enough for taking an impression, if your mind be of the right material, and you carry it away with you further down the Forest. Such a torrent will not reach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; and saw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an ivyed bridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight of many checkering branches, and washing the rockbase of a Hermitage, in which a sin-sickened, or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs were gray, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the noisy world? You are now all standing together in a group beside Ivy-cottage, the river gliding below its wooden bridge from Rydal-mere. It is a perfect model of such architecture-breathing the very spirit of Westmoreland. The public road, skirted by its front paling, does not in the least degree injure its character of privacy and retirement; so we think at this dewy hour of prime, when the gossamer meets our faces, extended from the honeysuckled slate-porch to the trees on the other side of the turnpike. And see how the multitude of low-hanging roofs and gable-ends, and dove-cot looking windows, steal away up a green and shrubberied acclivity, and terminating in wooded rocks that seem part of the building, in the uniting richness of ivy, lichens, moss-roses, broom, and sweet-brier, murmuring with birds and bees, busy near hive and nest! It would be extremely pleasant to breakfast in that deep-windowed room on the ground-floor, on cream and barley-cakes, eggs, coffee, and dry-toast, with a little mutton-ham not too severely salted, and at the conclusion, a nut-shell of Glenlivet or Cogniac. But, Lord preserve ye! it is not yet six o'clock in the morning; and what Christian kettle simmereth before seven? Yes, my sweet Harriet, that sketch does you credit, and it is far from being very unlike the original. Rather too many chimneys by about half-adozen; and where did you find that steeple im mediately over the window marked "Dairy?' The pigs are somewhat too sumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen roost might accommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are very happily hit off-you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof-and some of the windows may be justly said to be | staring likenesses.-Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shall compare it, on our return to Scotland, with Buchanan Lodge. Gallantry forbids, but Truth demands to say, that young ladies are but indifferent sketchers. The dear creatures have no notion of perspec-| tive. At flower-painting and embroidery, they are pretty fair hands, but they make sad work among waterfalls and ruins. Notwithstanding, it is pleasant to hang over them, seated on a stone or stool, drawing from nature; and now and then to help them in with a horse or a hermit. It is difficult, almost an impossible thing that foreshortening. The most speculative genius is often at a loss to conjecture the species of a human being foreshortened by a young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is, we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there is one at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castles in the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor is it an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumed chivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house on animals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. When they have succeeded in getting something like the appearance of water between what may be conjectured banks, they are not very particular about its running occasionally uphill; and it is interesting to see a stream stealing quietly below trees in gradual ascension, till, disappearing for a few minutes over one summit, it comes thundering down another, in the shape of a waterfall, on the head of an elderly gentleman, unsuspectingly reading Mr. Wordsworth's Excursion, perhaps, in the foreground. Nevertheless, we repeat, that it is delightful to hang over one of the dear creatures, seated on stone or stool, drawing from nature; for whatever may be the pencil's skill, the eye may behold the glimpse of a vision whose beauty shall be remembered when even Windermere herself has for a while faded into oblivion. risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along the velvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge-but then what a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate stone, whose unsteady clatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseech the timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast as you press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady old stager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each side of the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after due disentanglement, from that awkward, oldfashioned crutch and pummel, and from a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like a mouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, and difficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in the world is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can you bear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round, and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy at some distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea and Nay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in your tranquil bosom. Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; but look through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes will see distinctly, in spite of the trees, a bonâ fide farm-house, inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, a shepherd, and a woodsman. A Westmoreland cottage has scarcely any resemblance to a Scottish one. A Scottish cottage (in the Lowlands) has rarely any picturesque beauty in itself-a narrow oblong, with steep thatched roof, and an ear-like chimney at each of the two gableends. Many of the Westmoreland cottages would seem, to an ignorant observer, to have been originally built on a model conceived by the finest poetical genius. In the first place, they are almost always built precisely where they ought to be, had the builder's prime object been to beautify the dale; at least, so On such excursions there are sure to occur we have often felt in moods, when perhaps a few enviable adventures. First, the girths our emotions were unconsciously soothed into get wrong, and, without allowing your beloved complacency by the spirit of the scene. Where virgin to alight, you spend more time than is the sedgy brink of the lake or tarn circles into absolutely necessary in arranging them; nor a lone bay, with a low hill of coppice-wood on can you help admiring the attitude into which one side, and a few tall pines on the other, no the graceful creature is forced to draw up her it is a grove of sycamores-there, about a delicate limbs, that her fairy feet may not be hundred yards from the water, and about ten in the way to impede your services. By and above its ordinary level, peeps out from its by, a calf-which you hope will be allowed to cheerful seclusion that prettiest of all hamlets grow up into a cow-stretching up her curved-Braithwaitefold. The hill behind is scarcely red back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to the starting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of the fair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridlehand as you find the rein that has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip that never existed. A little further on, aing of lambs, a twitter of small birds, and the bridgeless stream crosses the road-a dangerous-looking ford indeed-a foot deep at the very least, and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry, serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way of becoming so) in your arms off the sad dle, nor relinquish the delightful clasp till all silvan-yet it has many hazels-a few bushes here and there a holly—and why or wherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweet pasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mild without much sunshine, there is a bleat deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always a feature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, for probably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire, since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire on the hearth. No. There is a volume of smoke, as if the |