our way along a narrow road, covered with trees, for nearly a mile, to the romantic glen of the little river Dritten.

The glen was an exceedingly deep and precipitous chasm, bearing a forcible resemblance to a cut made by a mighty hatchet in the abrupt walllike ridge of hills, and allowing the water that fell upon them and the numerous mossy hollows behind them to find its way to the plain in front, where, winding away round the moor we had crossed, it wandered deviously till it met the great river on which stands the town of Soandso, mingled with whose waters it was borne onwards to the sea.

Shortly before entering the dell, a compact little inn offered itself in our way, nicely whitewashed and very tidy-and well it might be, for the place, by its beauty, attracted visiters from all parts of the country, nay, even from other lands.

Here we rested, lunched, and replenished our bottle; then emerging, we walked up the banks of the stream, through an avenue completely embowered with noble trees, whose green, cool, fragrant shade, combined with the joyous music of the gushing stream beside us, the thrilling notes of the birds among the foliage, and the plashing of a mill-wheel a little in advance, raised in our minds those feelings of delight which the enthusiast of nature alone knows in their intensity.

As we advanced, the mill appeared so exquisitely rural and picturesque, that we stayed a minute to sketch it. It was a little whitewashed bleaching house of one story and fantastically shaped, a branch of an extensive factory down at the village, and had been built here to have the water in its most crystal purity, being used for the finest cambrics and light cotton goods. Its machinery had a wet, humming, splashing sound, most musical and refreshing to the ear; and about the door, and all over the open green field hard by, were a number of young girls, busy about their work, singing, talking, and laughing together. The reservoir of water, peopled by tiny fleets of snow-white ducks, added greatly to its beauty, while a thin wavery volume of blue smoke rose among the foliage above it from its slender chimney, itself to appearance scarcely more substantial. Leaving this place after a mirthful interchange of greetings with the operatives, we ascended the stream and entered the dell.

As we did so, our ears were filled with the sound of numerous cascades, and, looking before us, we seemed to be entering a vast arch of rock and foliage, with snowy sheets of falling water visible here and there amid the leaves. The sides of the ravine (for it was not extensive enough to merit the name of glen) were very rugged, but nearly perpendicular. Yet so many were the chinks and crannies, the angles and platforms of rock, from which trees took root, that it seemed almost as if it had been filled up by bundles of branches thrown in from above. Natheless, frequent. were the pinnacles and precipices that stood up, gray in their craggy nakedness, although the great majority were covered with ivy, or mantled by overhanging screens of bramble or other creeping brushwood, while ever and anon a spruce fir, or other golden-leaved tree, or haply a scarlet mountain ash (the dear rowan-tree of the north), would vary, by its richer tint, the every-shaded green.

The bottom of the ravine was a series of tiny cataracts, rolling down a

kind of stair-like descent, formed by numerous huge masses of rock, tumbled confusedly together, and fixed in the most wild and grotesque positions.

One vast block there was that appeared almost to dangle by two corners across from precipice to precipice, while the water foamed and bubbled through beneath. Another stood up on one point, like a ponderous weight on the chin of an expert balancer; whilst another again had been arrested just on the brink of a lofty ledge, over which the stream made a frantic bound beside it, and looked as if the next heavy rain would hurl it and destruction together sheer down into the black pool many fathoms below.

And yet, amid all this ruggedness, vegetation was most luxuriant ; there was not a little bank of sand brought down by the stream in winter that the summer sun had not changed into grass and flower-bearing soilnay, from every hollow and crevice of these isolated masses of stone shot forth knots of grass, with intermingled wild flowers of white, yellow, or blue. Sometimes the ravine narrowed to a strait, through which the water had barely room to make a hurried gush; elsewhere it expanded into rounded cup-like hollows, down into which the sun shone most joyously, the bottom being occupied by a rock-encircled bank of grassy ground, or a deep pool, which on one side washed the base of a precipice, on the other shoaled away to a beach of white pebbly sand.

Nor less eminent in beauty and wildness of aspect were the waterfalls. Some of them were of a most striking and original description, if I may apply the latter term to a natural object. In one instance there was a round pit-like place, with inaccessible, yet completely leaf concealed sides, and into this was pitched a branch of the stream, from a height so great that it was broken up by the air into myriads of drops, and fell a drizzling shower upon the large stones at the bottom, rendering them continually dark, mossy, wet, and slippery to the tread. But at the point where the column of water fell asunder thus into rain, a most lovely Iris bent her many-tinted bow from tree to tree across the hollow.

At another place the whole body of the stream was projected from a high horizontal shelf of rock completely hollowed out beneath, and fell with a dead sound into the centre of a deep circular pool. You could walk quite round behind the falling water, and in the farther point of the rock-roofed recess a rude seat had been hewn in the soft stone. Here Bob Whyte and I sat down together, and enjoyed a cheroot and a discussion with regard to the geologic phenomena around us.

Up on one side of this dell, and down the opposite, a rude footpath had been worn by the feet of pilgrims of the picturesque, which, however, to render it passable required in many places the aid of ladders several fathoms in height. These, composed of stout beams of wood, wedged be tween rocks, were constructed by the villagers. The whole aspect of the place, in short, was less like what you would expect to meet with in nature than what you would look for in the fantastic designs on a teatray, or the imaginative scenery of a romantic melo-drama.

For hours we rambled over this ravine, climbing trees, chipping rocks, collecting insects and wild flowers, scrambling over precipices and into

caves. Finally, emerging at the upper end of the chasm, we roved about upon the hill-side till the sun had sunk low in the sky. Then, hurriedly descending, we again traversed it, till we came to a beautiful clear pool with a rounded grassy bank, from which an old tree stooped its branches till within a couple of feet of the water's surface.

As soon as we had raised our heads above the surface, and while swimming about, exulting in the delicious refreshment of this bath after our travel, we observed an individual on the bank lay down a fishing-rod, and, with an inquiry as to the temperature of the water, plunge in along with us, and we soon all three were laughing, splashing, and diving about, springing from the branches of the overhanging tree into the pool, and capering away in all directions. When we had our fill of this, we donned our "toggery" again, and, shouldering our boxes of scientific specimens, whilst our new companion slung his well-filled basket across his haunch, away we started together down the ravine to the inn where we had bespoken dinner.

As we went, I took cognizance of the appearance and conversation of our companion. He was a slight, middle-aged looking man, with features well marked and decided, whose habitual expression appeared to be a smile of good humor dashed with a degree of condescension. He wore a sporting suit of light cotton stuff that fitted admirably; everything about him was evidently clean and neat, and from his bosom to one pocket hung a slender and very graceful gold chain. He displayed, as he talked, a very correct taste, abundance of information on all subjects, and a firm though unassuming way of stating his opinion. From all these circumstances I concluded him to be one of that class of beings entitled to be called" gentlemen" by more than their own assumption of the name.

He had been enjoying a day's sport, he told us, in the upper portion of the stream, and his heavy basket bore witness to his success.

Twenty minutes after reaching our inn, a most respectable country dinner was set before us, during which the stranger and Bob kept up the spirit of the conversation. When we had concluded the repast, we drew the table to the open window, and sat down to a bottle of admirable sherry, which had been cooled in the stream at the foot of the inn garden.

The window looked to the west, and the view of a magnificent summer sunset, the feelings of rest after much fatigue, of a satisfied appetite, and of the delicious, warm calmness of the evening, combined with the rich flavor of the wine, and its exhilarating effect upon our spirits, rendered us as happy as it is possible for care-beset mortals to be.

Our discourse was of lighter scientific subjects-late discoveries-recent works-their authors-phrenology-mesmerism-supernaturalism. Illustrative of the last topic, the stranger related an anecdote, which certainly was a curious one, and shall, in all probability, make its appearance in these reminiscences some day or other.

A Pedestrian Excursion.

PART III. BOB WHYTE'S EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

[IN connexion with the remarkable narrative which follows, the author begs the reader to acquit him of any desire to compel his belief in the truth of the position there laid down, but he would at the same time ask, if he himself cannot call to mind some particular circumstance or occasion, when his imagination has so played with his senses, as to render him, for the time being, a believer in the supernatural.]

THERE was a pause thereupon, and, he having requested my friend to relate any instance of a similar kind that had come under his knowledge, Bob Whyte, while the pensive languor of the ebbing and dewy twilight was falling upon us, filled his glass, and slightly sipping as he went on, narrated Episode No. II., in the shape of

THE FOOTSTEP.

I think there is one particular period in the life of every man to which he can look back as the most miserable he has ever seen, a point to which there was in his affairs a regular descent, and which passed, there has been again a progressive ascent-the ebb as it were in the tide of his fortunes. This crisis was very marked in my case, and I rejoice to think that it happened in my youth, for I have seen it occur in old age. Misfortunes of every kind were heaped upon me-sudden poverty struck me and my aged and only parent and I, saw no prospect but wretchedness. "Now then," thought I, "all my dreams of honorable independence, nay, of scientific distinction in the world, are dashed to the ground, and I must forego those darling studies and pursuits in which my hopes were bound up, to go out and earn, with toil of body and heaviness of spirit the bread of sorrow for myself and the one who has none but Heaven and me to depend on. Or must I leave this dear land, of which my very heart seems part and parcel, and go to scrape gold from among the sun-scorched sands of fever-guarded climes?"

The friends of prosperity forsook me, and I skulked on the shady side of the street, whilst they strutted in the sun and contemptuously looked the other way. Nay, my own relations no longer received me with com

mon kindness; the very bread I ate, which came from them, was given with a grudge, felt and shown if not expressed, and many a taunt was flung at the fool that had aimed at a rank for which by nature and fortune he was totally unfit, and had miserably failed-of course.

All this was bitter-bitter! I felt it cut into my very soul: moreover, I was smitten with a severe and prostrating illness, from a wound received in dissection, and was now but slowly recovering comparative health.

A friend I had too-ours was a schoolboy friendship-he was my most intimate companion-my more than brother-with whom I had ledged, studied, and grown up to manhood-in whom I had placed more confidence than in any other being-from whom I had no hope or purpose concealed bright prospects were opening before him, and in my distress (alas! for love without his wings!) this friend forsook me, and laughed and gloried in the act-he called it "cutting the connexion."

But all this I thought I could bear up against, and I did so, hoping with patience and self-denial to surmount my difficulties-at least to fall before them disputing every inch of ground, and returning to all, scorn for scorn. But the hand of fate was heavy on me. Another visitation came and crushed my spirit utterly. I bowed to the dust before it, and became as those who have no hope.

There was one I loved, and she was fair—oh, how very fair! Do not doubt this from the fact that she doted on a being so uncouth as I am. She was the centre to which all my thoughts did gravitate-the golden evening to the morrow of my hopes.

I never loved another; and when love arises in a mind like mine, it is more than a sentiment or a passion-it is a something else, which mental philosophers have not classified or found a name for, never having experienced it, and of course ignorant of its existence.

We had known each other long, our ages differed but in a few months, and our dispositions harmonised most closely. It is not to be believed, I know, but it is true, that never in our long intimacy did one word of il humor pass between us; for she was one whom no one could find it in his heart to vex-a soft, mild creature, gentle as the lapse of streams, and while her mind was of strength to appreciate the nature and value of my studies, and the zeal with which I pursued them, yet with all the diffidence and all the amiability of her sex she was eminently adorned,-kindness and pity hung around her in a palpable grace, and her sweet quiet laugh made the hearer's heart dance in his bosom.

Ours was not that passion which leads to evil. It seemed to consist of a soul-engrossing desire for each other's good, and a feeling of unspeakable rapture in each other's society. In me it acted as a kind of conscience, for no bad thought, no malice, envy, or hatred, durst arise in my heart while it was there, and it was there always. To it I am convinced I owe those habits of studiousness from which I now feel it painful to deviate, for all that time my thoughts but moved from the subject of my reading to the object of my love, and back again by a dear reaction. Often, long after midnight, when my lamp burned low, and the extinguished