Nothing can exceed the beauty of the cottages, and of their situations about these lakes. So also the sailboats, passing in all directions, seen among the wooded islands and shooting out from behind the headlands, freighted with beauty, and mirth, and music, communicate an inexpressible life and charm to the scenery. And I fancy that such tokens of social happiness are very necessary to give these scenes the power they have, over the heart and imagination. It fills up the measure of the contrast. But that is not it-or it is not all. These signs of humanity and happiness make the scene image to us ourselves, as well as the Supreme Power. In the unvisited wilds of nature, in dell and grot, in grove and greensward untrodden by the footsteps of men, the mind is prone to imagine that fairy creatures walk; poetry has peopled them with life; the strong sympathy of the soul calls upon the whole creation to give it back, the image of itself.

AUGUST 3. I left the lake country and came down to Kendal,

The ride from Kendal to Lancaster is a pleasant one, especially about the banks of the Kent. At Lancaster is a castle, now turned into a jail, which belonged to the house of Lancaster, and was built in the reign of Edward III. The central tower,

the only portion of the old castle remaining, is square, and huge enough to have belonged to

"Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster."

It is called John of Gaunt's Chair. Appropriately to this title, there is from the top of the tower a very delightful prospect. A fine symbol of office for an old baronial sovereign-patriarch, chieftain, landlord, all in one; a tower for his chair, where he sits, a king farmer, to overlook the rich glebe, pasture and valley. Those forms of power, with the rough and sternhearted times that gave them birth, are passing away. May other and nobler forms arise to take their place!

CHAPTER V.

Railway from Liverpool-Manchester-Derbyshire-Chatsworths -Haddon Hall-Matlock-Scenery and Guides-Wellesley Castle-Lichfield-Birmingham-Musical Hall-Concerts in America-Kenilworth-Warwick-Stratford on Avon-Shaks

peare.

RAILWAY from Liverpool. The tunnel disappointed me. It is not so great a work as I expected-not so long. The motion on the railway is so rapid as to set everything in the country about-houses, trees, groves-dancing a waltz. It seems as if the whole surrounding creation were revolving in circles-the distant objects going one way, and those nearest, the opposite way.

MANCHESTER-wrapped in the cloud of smoke proceeding from its innumerable manufactories. For the sole power is steam here; every factory has its engine and its high chimney, sending out its dense, black volume of smoke, as it were, in the very face of the pure heavens-which foul mass of sulphurous vapours descends into the streets, infesting the nostrils, choking the lungs, blearing

the sight, clouding the vista, so that sometimes you can scarce see a hundred yards.

They say it rains oftener in Manchester than in any other place in the kingdom. I should think it. And, indeed, I have several times heard it observed of one city and another, that it rains oftener in them than in the surrounding country. So far as appearances are concerned, and, I think, comfort too, it is fortunate for our cities that the anthracite coal is to be the staple fuel.

BAKEWELL in DERBYSHIRE, AUGUST 6. In approaching Derbyshire, you leave the immense levels of Lancashire for a more diversified and beautiful country, and when you enter this county, the limestone cliffs, with deep hollows and vales worn between, appear everywhere-marking the country of the Peak.

It must be, I think, that the body of people in this country, the nine tenths, are less intelligent than the same body in our country. I certainly find more well-dressed and well-behaved people here who are ignorant, to an extent that would shame such looking people in America. For instance, I heard a very self-sufficient Scotchman here this evening, boasting of Walter Scott as his countryman, and yet very soon saying, that the scene of one of his novels could not be in Derby

shire, because none of them was laid in England.* I have heard very plain, hard-working people in America, in the conversation of the barroom, quote Locke and Stewart. There are not so many books here in the taverns, in the farmhouses, in the houses of the common people, on the shelves every where as there are among us.

Have I spoken of women, working in the fields? Not in Ireland, nor in Wales only, but in Scotland and in England, this is constantly seen: not in harvest only-but they hoe, and dig, and delve, in all fields and at all seasons-sometimes four, five, ten -nay, twenty I have seen in a field. It must tend to give them a rough and coarse character; to their persons it certainly does.

While at Bakewell, I visited Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire, and Haddon Hall, an ancient and deserted castle on the estates of the Duke of Rutland; one, five miles, and the other two miles distant.

Chatsworth is an immense castle, of the Ionic order, the oldest part built round a hollow square -the new part, a continuation, one story lower, of the rear block or portion, of the pile; and so extensive, that, when finished, there is to be a suite of rooms, through the whole of which the eye will

* Only an instance, I allow.