silence. What medicine for them like the equally versatile and profound-the first bota breath of heaven the dew-the sunshine- in intellect and in imagination. He was a and the murmur of the wave! Nature her- poor man's son-the only son of a working self is their kind physician, and sometimes carpenter-and his father intended him for the not unfrequently brings them by her holy skill church. But the youth soon felt that to him back to the world of clear intelligence and the trammels of a strict faith would be unserene affection. They listen calmly to the bearable, and he lived on from year to year, blessed sound of the oar that brings a visit of uncertain what profession to choose. Meanfriends to sojourn with them for a day-or while his friends, all inferior to him in talents to take them away to another retirement, and acquirements, followed the plain, open, where they, in restored reason, may sit around and beaten path, that leads sooner or later to the board, nor fear to meditate during the mid- respectability and independence. He was left night watches on the dream, which, although alone in his genius, useless, although admired dispelled, may in all its ghastliness return.-while those who had looked in high hopes There was a glorious burst of sunshine! And of all the Lomond Isles, what one rises up in the sudden illumination so bright as Inch-Cruin? Methinks we see sitting in his narrow and low-roofed cell, careless of food, dress, sleep, or shelter alike, him who in the opulent mart of commerce was one of the most opulent, and devoted heart and soul to show and magnificence. His house was like a palace with its pictured and mirror'd walls, and the nights wore away to dance, revelry, and song. For tune poured riches at his feet, which he had only to gather up; and every enterprise in which he took part, prospered beyond the reach of imagination. But all at once-as if lightning had struck the dome of his prosperity, and earthquake let down its foundations, it sank, crackled, and disappeared-and the man of a million was a houseless, infamous, and bankrupt beggar. In one day his proud face changed into the ghastly smiling of an idiot-he dragged his limbs in paralysis -and slavered out unmeaning words foreign to all the pursuits in which his active intellect had for many years been plunged. All his relations-to whom it was known he had never shown kindness-were persons in humble condition. Ruined creditors we do not expect to be very pitiful, and people asked what was to become of him till he died. A poor creature, whom he had seduced and abandoned to want, but who had succeeded to a small property on the death of a distant relation, remembered her first, her only love, when all the rest of the world were willing to forget him; and she it was who had him conveyed thither, herself sitting in the boat with her arm round the unconscious idiot, who now vegetates on the charity of her whom he betrayed. For fifteen years he has continued to exist in the same state, and you may pronounce his name on the busy Exchange of the city where he flourished and fell, and haply the person you speak to shall have entirely forgotten it. The evils genius sometimes brings to its possessor have often been said and sung, perhaps with exaggerations, but not always without truth. It is found frequently apart from prudence and principle; and in a world constituted like ours, how can it fail to reap a harvest of misery or death? A fine genius, and even a high, had been bestowed on One who is now an inmate of that cottage cell, peering between these two rocks. At College, he outstripped all his compeer by powers on his early career, began to have their fears that they might never be realized. His first attempts to attract the notice of the public, although not absolute failures-for some of his compositions, both in prose and verse, were indeed beautiful-were not triumphantly successful, and he began to taste the bitterness of disappointed ambition. His wit and colloquial talents carried him into the society of the dissipated and the licentious; and before he was aware of the fact, he had got the character of all others the most humiliating-that of a man who knew not how to estimate his own worth, nor to preserve it from pollution. He found himself silently and gradually excluded from the higher circle which he had once adorned, and sunk inextricably into a lower grade of social life. His whole habits became loose and irregular; his studies were pursued but by fits and starts; his knowledge, instead of keeping pace with that of the times, became clouded and obscure, and even diminished; his dress was meaner; his manners hurried, and reckless, and wild, and ere long he became a slave to drunkenness, and then to every low and degrading vice. His father died, it was said, of a broken heart for to him his son had been all in all, and the unhappy youth felt that the death lay at his door. At last, shunned by most-tolerated but by a few for the sake of other times-domiciled in the haunts of infamy-loaded with a heap of paltry debts, and pursued by the hounds of the law, the fear of a prison drove him mad, and his whole mind was utterly and hopelessly overthrown. A few of the friends of his boyhood raised a subscription in his behoof-and within the gloom of these woods he has been shrouded for many years, but not unvisited once or twice a summer by some one, who knew, loved, and admired him in the morning of that genius that long before its meridian brightness had been so fatally eclipsed. And can it be in cold and unimpassioned words like these that we thus speak of Thee and thy doom, thou Soul of fire, and once the brightest of the free, privileged by nature to walk along the mountain-ranges, and mix their spirits with the stars! Can it be that all thy glorious aspirations, by thyself forgotten, have no dwelling-place in the memory of one who loved thee so well, and had his deepest affection so profoundly returned! Thine was a heart once tremblingly alive to all the noblest and finest sympathies of our nature, and the humblest human sensibilities became beautifu! when tinged by the light of thy imagination Thy genius invested the most ordinary objects | palled was he ever in the whizzing and hissing with a charm not their own; and the vision it fire-nor did his bold broad breast ever shrink created thy lips were eloquent to disclose. from the bayonet, that with the finished fencer's What although thy poor old father died, be- art he has often turned aside when red with cause by thy hand all his hopes were shivered, death. In many of the pitched battles of the and for thy sake poverty stripped even the Spanish campaigns his plume was conspicuous coverlet from his dying-bed-yet we feel as if over the dark green lines, that, breaking asunsome dreadful destiny, rather than thy own der in fragments like those of the flowing sea, crime, blinded thee to his fast decay, and only to re-advance over the bloody fields, closed thine ears in deafness to his beseeching cleared the ground that was to be debated beprayer. Oh! charge not to creatures such as tween the great armaments. Yet in all such we all the fearful consequences of our mis- desperate service he never received one single conduct and evil ways! We break hearts we wound. But on a mid-day march, as he was would die to heal-and hurry on towards the gaily singing a love-song, the sun smote him grave those whom to save we would leap into to the very brain, and from that moment his the devouring fire. Many wondered in their right hand grasped the sword no more. anger that thou couldst be so callous to the Not on the face of all the earth-or of all the old man's grief-and couldst walk tearless at sea-is there a spot of profounder peace than his coffin. The very night of the day he was that isle that has long been his abode. But to buried thou wert among thy wild companions, him all the scene is alive with the pomp of in a house of infamy, close to the wall of the war. Every far-off precipice is a fort, that has churchyard. Was not that enough to tell us its own Spanish name-and the cloud above all that disease was in thy brain, and that seems to his eyes the tricolor, or the flag of his reason, struggling with insanity, had changed own victorious country. War, that dread game sorrow to despair. But perfect forgiveness-that nations play at, is now to the poor insane forgiveness made tender by profoundest pitywas finally extended to thee by all thy friends -frail and erring like thyself in many things, although not so fatally misled and lost, because in the mystery of Providence not so irresistibly tried. It seemed as if thou hadst offended the Guardian Genius, who, according to the old philosophy which thou knewest so well, is given to every human being at his birth; and that then the angel left thy side, and Satan strove to drag thee to perdition. And hath any peace come to thee-a youth no morebut in what might have been the prime of manhood, bent down, they say, to the ground, with a head all floating with silver hairs-hath any peace come to thy distracted soul in these woods, over which there now seems again to brood a holy horror?-Yes-thy fine dark eyes are not wholly without intelligence as they look on the sun, moon, and stars; although all their courses seem now confused to thy imagination, once regular and ordered in their magnificence before that intellect which science claimed as her own. The harmonies of nature are not all lost on thy ear, poured forth throughout all seasons, over the world of sound and sight. Glimpses of beauty startle thee as thou wanderest along the shores of thy prison-isle; and that fine poetical genius, not yet extinguished altogether, although fail: and flickering, gives vent to something like snatches of songs, and broken elegies, that seem to wail over the ruins of thy own soul! Such peace as ever visits them afflicted as thou art, be with thee in cell or on shore; nor lost to Heaven will be the wild moanings of-to usthy unintelligible prayers! But hark to the spirit-stirring voice of the bugle scaling the sky, and leaping up and down In echoes among the distant mountains! Such a strain animates the voltigeur, skirmishing in front of the line of battle, or sending flashes of sudden death from the woods. Alas! for him who now deludes his yet high heart with a few notes of the music that so often was accompanied by his sword waving on to glory. Unap soldier a mere child's pastime, from which sometimes he himself will turn with a sigh or a smile. For sense assails him in his delirium, for a moment and no more; and he feels that he is far away, and for ever, from all his companions in glory, in an asylum that must be left but for the grave! Perhaps in such moments he may have remembered the night, when at Badajos he led the forlorn hope; but even forlorn hope now hath he none, and he sinks away back into his delusions, at which even his brother sufferers smile-so foolish does the restless campaigner seem to these men of peace! Lo! a white ghost-like figure, slowly issuing from the trees, and sitting herself down on a stone, with face fixed on the waters! Now she is so perfectly still, that had we not seen her motion thither, she and the rock would have seemed but one! Somewhat fantastically dressed, even in her apparent despair. Were we close to her, we should see a face yet beautiful, beneath hair white as snow. Her voice too, but seldom heard, is still sweet and low; and sometimes, when all are asleep, or at least silent, she begins at midnight to sing! She yet touches the guitar-an instrument in fashion in Scotland when she led the fashion-with infinite grace and delicacy-and the songs she loves best are those in a foreign tongue. For more than thirty years hath the unfortunate lady come to the water's edge daily, and hour after hour continue to sit motionless on that self-same stone, looking down into the loch. Her story is now almost like a dim tradition from other ages, and the history of those who come here often fades away into nothing. Everywhere else they are forgotten-here there are none who can remember. Who once so beautiful as the "Fair Portuguese?" It was said at that time that she was a Nun-but the sacred veil was drawn aside by the hand of love, and she came to Scotland with her deliverer! Yes, her deliverer! He delivered her from the gloom-often the peaceful gloom that hovers round the altar of Superstition-and after a few years of love and life and joy-she | Inversnayde, and whom they vainly wept over sat where you now see her sitting, and the as dead. One evening she had floated away world she had adorned moved on in brightness by herself in a small boat-while her parents and in music as before! Since there has to her heard, without fear, the clang-duller and dull. been so much suffering-was there on her part er-of the oars, no longer visible in the distant no sin? No-all believed her to be guiltless, moonshine. In an hour the returning vesse except one, whose jealousy would have seen touched the beach-but no child was to be falsehood lurking in an angel's eyes; but she seen-and they listened in vain for the music was utterly deserted; and being in a strange of the happy creature's songs. For weeks the country, worse than an orphan, her mind gave loch rolled and roared like the sea-nor was way; for say not-oh say not-that innocence the body found any where lying on the shore. can always stand against shame and despair! Long, long afterwards, some little white bones The hymns she sings at midnight are hymns to were interred in Christian burial, for the pathe Virgin; but all her songs are songs about rents believed them to be the remains of their love and chivalry, and knights that went cru- child-all that had been left by the bill of the sading to the Holy Land. He who brought her raven. But not so thought many dwellers from another sanctuary into the one now before along the mountain-shores-for had not her us, has been dead many years. He perished very voice been often heard by the shepherds, in shipwreck-and 'tis thought that she sits when the unseen flight of Fairies sailed singing there gazing down into the loch, as on the along up the solitary Glenfalloch, away over place where he sank or was buried; for when the moors of Tynedrum, and down to the sweet told that he was drowned, she shrieked, and Dalmally, where the shadow of Cruachan made the sign of the cross-and since that long-darkens the old ruins of melancholy Kilchurn? ago day that stone has in all weathers been The lost child's parents died in their old ageher constant seat. but she, 'tis said, is unchanged in shape and Away we go westwards-like fire-worship-features-the same fair thing she was the pers devoutly gazing on the setting sun. And evening that she disappeared, only a shade of another isle seems to shoot across our path, sadness is on her pale face, as if she were separated suddenly, as if by magic, from the pining for the sound of human voices, and the mainland. How beautiful, with its many cres- gleam of the peat-fire of the shieling. Ever, cents, the low-lying shores, carrying here and when the Fairy-court is seen for a moment be. there a single tree quite into the water, and neath the glimpses of the moon, she is sitting with verdant shallows guarding the lonely se- by the side of the gracious Queen. Words of clusion even from the keel of canoe! Round might there are, that if whispered at right seaand round we row, but not a single landing son, would yet recall her from the shadowy place. Shall we take each of us a fair burden world, to which she has been spirited away; in his arms, and bear it to that knoll, whisper- but small sentinels stand at their stations round ing and quivering through the twilight with a the isle, and at nearing of human breath, a few birches whose stems glitter like silver pil-shrill warning is given from sedge and waterlars in the shade? No-let us not disturb the silent people, now donning their green array for nightly revelries. It is the " Isle of Fairies," and on that knoll hath the fishermen often seen their Queen sitting on a throne, surrounded by myriads of creatures no taller than hare-bells; one splash of the oar-and all is vanished. There, it is said, lives among the Folk of Peace, the fair child who, many years ago, disappeared from her parents' shieling at lilly, and like dew-drops melt away the phantoms, while, mixed with peals of little laughter, overhead is heard the winnowing of wings. For the hollow of the earth, and the hollow of the air, is their Invisible Kingdom; and when they touch the herbage or flowers of this earth of ours, whose lonely places they love, then only are they revealed to human eyes-at all times else to our senses unexistent as dreams! A DAY AT WINDERMERE. OLD and gouty, we are confined to our chair; | dulgent master. 'Tis pleasure to look at Doand occasionally, during an hour of rainless mitian-so we love to call him-sallying from sunshine, are wheeled by female hands along the centre against a wearied wasp, lying, like the gravel-walks of our Policy, an unrepining a silk worm, circumvoluted in the inextricable and philosophical valetudinarian. Even the toils, and then seizing the sinner by the nape Crutch is laid up in ordinary, and is encircled of the neck, like Christopher with a Cockney, with cobwebs. A monstrous spider has there to see the emperor haul him away into the set up his rest; and our still study ever and charnel-house. But we have often less savage anon hearkens to the shrill buzz of some poor recreations-such as watching our bee-hives fly expiring between those formidable forceps when about to send forth colc nies-feeding our -just as so many human ephemerals have pigeons, a purple people that dazzle the daylight breathed their last beneath the bite of his in--gathering roses as they choke our smal chariot-wheels with their golden orbs-eating | scaffold-but like ourselves, on a hair-mattress grapes out of vine-leaf-draperied baskets, above a feather-bed, our head decently sunk in beautifying beneath the gentle fingers of the three pillows and one bolster, and our frame Gentle into fairy network graceful as the gos- stretched out unagitatedly beneath a white samer-drinking elder-flower frontiniac from counterpane. But meanwhile-though almost invisible glasses, so transparent in its yellow- as unlocomotive as the dead in body -there is ness seems the liquid radiance-at one mo- perpetual motion in our minds. Sleep is one ment eyeing a page of Paradise Lost, and at thing, and stagnation is another-as is well another of Paradise Regained; for what else known to all eyes that have ever seen, by is the face of her who often visiteth our Eden, moonlight and midnight, the face of Christoand whose coming and whose going is ever pher North, or of Windermere. like a heavenly dream. Then laying back. our head upon the cushion of our triumphal car, and with half-shut eyes, subsiding slowly into haunted sleep or slumber, with our fine features up to heaven, a saint-like image, such as Raphael loved to paint, or Flaxman to embue with the soul of stillness in the lifehushed marble. Such, dearest reader, are some of our pastimes-and so do we contrive to close our ears to the sound of the scythe of Saturn, ceaselessly sweeping over the earth, and leaving, at every stride of the mower, a swathe more rueful than ever, after a night of shipwreck, did strew with ghastliness a lee sea-shore! Thus do we make a virtue of necessityand thus contentment wreathes with silk and velvet the prisoner's chains. Once were we long, long ago-restless as a sunbeam on the restless wave-rapid as a river that seems enraged with all impediments, but all the while in passionate love Windermere! Why, at this blessed moment we behold the beauty of all its intermingling isles. There they are-all gazing down on their own reflected loveliness in the magic mirror of the air-like water, just as many a holy time we have seen them all agaze, when, with suspended oar and suspended breath— no sound but a ripple on the Naiad's bow, and a beating at our own heart-motionless in our own motionless bark-we seemed to float midway down that beautiful abyss between the heaven above and the heaven below, on some strange terrestrial scene composed of trees and the shadows of trees, by the imagination made indistinguishable to the eye, and as delight deepened into dreams, all lost at last, clouds, groves, water, air, sky, in their various and profound confusion of supernatural peace. But a sea-born breeze is on Bowness Bay; all at once the lake is blue as the sky; and that evanescent world is felt to have been but a vision. Like swans that had been asleep in the airless sunshine, strong as a steed let loose from Arab's tent in lo! where from every shady nook appear the the oasis to slake his thirst at the desert well-white-sailed pinnaces; for on merry Winderfierce in our harmless joy as a red-deer belling mere-you must know-every breezy hour on the hills-tameless as the eagle sporting in has its own Regatta. the storm-gay as the "dolphin on a tropic sea"-"mad as young bulls"-and wild as a whole wilderness of adolescent lions. But now -alas! and alack-a-day! the sunbeam is but "Pure description holds the place of sense,"a patch of sober verdure-the river is changed therefore, let us be simple but not silly, as into a canal-the "desert-born" is foundered-plain as is possible without being prosy, as the red-deer is slow as an old ram-the eagle instructive as is consistent with being enterhas forsook his cliff and his clouds, and hops taining, a cheerful companion and a trusty among the gooseberry bushes-the dolphin has guide. degenerated into a land tortoise-without danger now might a very child take the bull by the horns-and though something of a lion still, our roar is like that of the nightingale, "most musical, most melancholy"-and, as we attempt to shake our mane, your grandmother-fair peruser-cannot choose but weep. "Doth make sweet music with th' enamell'd stones,' But intending to be useful, we are becoming ornamental: of us it must not be said, that We shall suppose that you have left Kendal, and are on your way to Bowness. Forget, as much as may be, all worldly cares and anxieties, and let your hearts be open and free to all genial impulses about to be breathed into them from the beautiful and sublime in nature. There is no need of that foolish state of feeling It speaks folios in favour of our philanthropy, called enthusiasm. You have but to be happy; to know that, in our own imprisonment, we and by and by your happiness will grow into Love to see all life free as air. Would that by delight. The blue mountains already set your a word of ours we could clothe all human imaginations at work; among those clouds and shoulders with wings! would that by a word mists you fancy many a magnificent preciof ours we could plume all human spirits pice-and in the valleys that sleep below you with thoughts strong as the eagle's pinions, image to yourselves the scenery of rivers and that they might winnow their way into the lakes. The landscape immediately around graempyrean! Tories! Yes! we are Tories. dually grows more and more picturesque and Our faith is in the Divine right of kings-but romantic; and you feel that you are on the easy, my boys, easy-all free men are kings, very borders of Fairy-Land. The first smile and they hold their empire from heaven. That of Windermere salutes your impatient eyes, is our political-philosophical-moral-reli- and sinks silently into your heart. You know gious creed. In its spirit we have lived--not how beautiful it may be-nor yet in what and in its spirit we hope to die-not on the the beauty consists; but your finest sensibilities scaffold like Sidney-no-no-no-not by to nature are touched-and a tinge of poetry, as any manner of means like Sidney on the from a rainbow, overspreads that cluster of islands that seems to woo yu to their still re- | bearing down to windward-for the morning treats. And now "Wooded Winandermere, the river-lake," breeze is born-many a tiny sail. It has the appearance of a race. Yes it is a race; and the Liverpoolian, as of yore, is eating them all out of the wind, and without another tack will make her anchorage. But hark-Music! "Tis the Bowness Band playing "See the conquer. ing Hero comes!"-and our old friend has carried away the gold cup from all competi tors. with all its bays and promontories, lies in the morning light serene as a Sabbath, and cheerful as a Holyday; and you feel that there is loveliness on this earth more exquisite and perfect than ever visited your slumbers even in the glimpses of a dream. The first sight of such a scene will be unforgotten to your dying day-for such passive impressions are deeper Now turn your faces up the hill above the than we can explain-our whole spiritual being village school. That green mount is what is is suddenly awakened to receive them-and called a-Station. The villagers are admiring associations, swift as light, are gathered into a grove of parasols, while you the party-are one Emotion of Beauty which shall be imperish- admiring the village-with its irregular roofs able, and which, often as memory recalls that white, blue, gray, green, brown, and black moment, grows into genius, and vents itself in walls- fruit-laden trees so yellow-its central appropriate expressions, each in itself a picture. church-tower-and environing groves variously Thus may one moment minister to years; and burnished by autumn. Saw ye ever banks and the life-wearied heart of old age by one delight- braes and knolls so beautifully bedropt with ful remembrance be restored to primal joy-human dwellings? There is no solitude about Windermere. Shame on human nature were the glory of the past brought beamingly upon Paradise uninhabited ! Here, in amicable the faded present-and the world that is obscurely passing away from our eyes re-illu- neighbourhood, are halls and huts-here rises mined with the visions of its early morn. The through groves the dome of the rich man's shows of nature are indeed evanscent, but their mansion-and there the low roof of the poor spiritual influences are immortal; and from that man's cottage beneath its one single sycagrove now glowing in the sunlight may your more! Here are hundreds of small properties heart derive a delight that shall utterly perish hereditary in the same families for hundreds but in the grave. of years-and never, never, O Westmoreland! may thy race of statesmen be extinct-nor the virtues that ennoble their humble households! But now you are in the White Lion, and our advice to you-perhaps unnecessary-is immediately to order breakfast. There are many parlours-some with a charming prospect and some without any prospect at all; but remember that there are other people in the world besides yourselves-and therefore, into whatever parlour you may be shown by a pretty maid, be contented, and lose no time in addressing yourselves to your repast. That over, be in no hurry to get on the Lake. Perhaps all the boats are engaged -and Billy Balmer is at the Waterhead. So stroll into the churchyard, and take a glance over the graves. Close to the oriel-window of the church is one tomb over which one might meditate half an autumnal day. Enter the church, and you will feel the beauty of these fine lines in the Excursion "Not raised in nice proportions was the pile, grove, See, suddenly brought forth by sunshine from among the old woods-and then sinking away into her usual unobtrusive serenity-the lake. loving Rayrig, almost level, so it seems, with the water, yet smiling over her own quiet bay from the grove-shelter of her pastoral mound. Within her walls may peace ever dwell with piety-and the light of science long blend with the lustre of the domestic hearth. Thence to Calgarth is all one forest-yet glade-broken, and enlivened by open uplands; so that the roamer, while he expects a night of umbrage, often finds himself in the open day, beneath the bright blue bow of heaven haply without a cloud. The eye travels delighted over the multitudinous tree-tops-often dense as one single tree-till it rests, in sublime satisfaction, on the far-off mountains, that lose not a woody character till the tree-sprinkled pastures roughen into rocks-and rocks tower into precipices where the falcons breed. But the lake will not suffer the eye long to wander among Go down to the low terrace-walk along the the distant glooms. She wins us wholly to Bay. The Bay is in itself a Lake, at all times herself-and restlessly and passionately for a cheerful with its scattered fleet, at anchor or while, but calmly and affectionately at last, the under weigh-its villas and cottages, each re-heart embraces all her beauty, and wishes joicing in its garden or orchard-its meadows that the vision might endure for ever, and that mellowing to the reedy margin of the pellucid here our tents were pitched-to be struck nc water-its heath-covered boat-houses-its own more during our earthly pilgrimage. Imagina portion of the Isle called Beautiful-and be- tion lapses into a thousand moods. Oh for a yond that silvan haunt, the sweet Furness fairy pinnace to glide and float for aye over Fells, with gentle outline undulating in the those golden waves! A hermit-cell on sweet sky, and among its spiral larches showing, Lady-Holm! A silvan shieling on Loughrig here and there, groves and copses of the old side! A nest in that nameless dell, which unviolated woods. Yes, Bowness-Bay is in sees but one small slip of heaven, and longs at itself a Lake; but how finely does it blend night for the reascending visit of its few loving away, through its screens of oak and syca- stars! A dwelling open to all the skyey inmore-trees, into a larger Lake-another, yet fluence on the mountain-brow, the darling of the same on whose blue bosom you see the rising or the setting sun, and often seen by |