and my dwelling. That little tree was my | We wanted to clothe the little quarry and other daily anxiety for some time, till at last, when pondering how to fence it round without stifling it, it occurred to me to dig a flower-bed round it, which would preserve it from most of the mischances that it was liable to. It is an odd place for a flower-bed, but that does not matter. There the sacred little tree now flourishes,slow of growth, of course, but vigorous, and no longer in danger of being trodden down.

rocks with beauty,-to lodge there the white and yellow stonecrop, and Cheddar pinks, and ferns, and foxglove, and heather of various sorts; and to make the periwinkle hang down from the brow, and to lead the honeysuckle trailing up, supporting itself by the roots of the oak growing above. We accepted whatever was offered us, and then found that we were lowly enough to be pleased with the wild flowers which are yielded to the seeker by every

As the March days lengthened, the valley and the hill slopes gave hints of exchanging | field, copse, wall, and bank in this region. their dull hay-colour here and there for a lively After returning thanks for the thinnings of our spring green; and we began to think of getting | friends' gardens,—iris, asters, pinks, hepaticas, forward with the garden. In this we had &c.,-we went to the weedy bridge at Clapperseffectual help from my German friend Fredrika, gate for some of the yellow stonecrop which albeit she lives at Bowness, six miles from us. grew there. We went with Mrs. D. to avail When we had once settled where our flower- ourselves of permission from Lady Le Fleming's beds and borders were to be-how many on steward to take heather from an enclosure the north slope, how many under the terrace which is a sort of heather preserve. This was wall, and of what shape to make the one laborious work, so we hired Fisher's cart, with within the quarry, Fredrika knew how to pro- the donkey and Jack Fisher, who carried his ceed, and would not allow me to be disturbed, father's heavy spade and dug up large blocks if she came when I was busy. Her way was of peat soil rich with heather, wherewith to to row herself in one of her three boats from adorn our rock-shelves. But the expeditions Bowness to the head of the lake, stopping to which we enjoyed the most were those which eat her breakfast in the centre of the lake, and we made by ourselves, Jane and I, with our also to fish for our dinner. According to the lunch and our frail baskets, and each a trowel, month she would bring a booty of trout, carp, -one trowel being small enough to take the or pike, and her fishing seems to be always ferns clean out of the crevices of the walls. more or less successful. She would land in the garden at Croft Lodge, and there add some fresh vegetables to her present of fish. She would then walk the mile and a half to my house, quietly put in her basket at the back door, take the heaviest tools from the toolhouse, and go to work. With pickaxe, spade, and riddle, she cleared the rock here, trenched a bed there, and prepared a choice border for our best plants. It was she who made and stocked my first dahlia-beds, driving in the poles with her own hands. It was she who sent me half the roses I have, and made the terrace suddenly gay the next summer, with a grand show of geraniums. When, at two o'clock, my morning's work in my study was done, I went out and worked with her till dinner-time; and then, if I accompanied her to her boat, or further, so as to take a pair of oars with her, and land at Lowwood to walk home, how sweet were those spring evenings in the meadows and on the water! How, as we cut through the lights and shadows on the surface of the lake, did Fredrika tell of her feats with her gun among the wild swans and other fowl that visited us in their passage, or answer the cuckoo that hailed us from the woods on the shore!

In the intervals between Fredrika's visits, my maid Jane and I strove to adorn our knoll in an humbler way than by my friend's lavish aid.

For a sample,-first, across the meadows. But we are stopped at the gate by Mother Stewart, who must be attended to at her own time or not at all. Mother Stewart, whom Mrs. Wordsworth and Mrs. Arnold call a friend of theirs, and whom I humbly hope to be allowed to consider my friend too, looks so weatherbeaten to-day as to show that she has only just arrived from a peregrination; and here comes her cart, with her son in it, driving slowly, that he may not break my new crockery. Ambleside is not a place for the display of a crockery-shop; and, in furnishing my house, my only resource in this department is Mother Stewart, who itinerates with her whole family, taking orders and going into Staffordshire for what is wanted. I dare say, I am her principal customer this time; and we must now turn back to see what she has done for How gipsy-like she looks, with her red and blue handkerchief hanging about her face under her weatherbeaten black bonnet, and her arms akimbo, except when she takes her pipe from her mouth to speak! When her ware is all spread out on the kitchen floor, I see how good her taste is wherever I have left her an option: and I praise the chamber-ewers and basins, the water-pitchers and tea-service. But lo! the good taste is only after a pattern, I fear, for now she wants me to buy for mantelpiece ornaments some scarlet or green castles,

us.

with blue towers for paper-lighters,-articles | when it was flooded, it seems as strange as which she holds off at arm's length, calling ever that such an event should have happened them in a sincere enthusiasm "most beauti- almost at my very gate,-only on the other side ful." Here is another proof of the old-fa- of a slip of field. shioned character of the region. Formerly, in the days when blue and red plaster cats, and scarlet and green china owls and parrots were found in cottages, such chimney-ware as this might be seen on the shelves of crockery-shops as a chief adornment. The good cheap prints, and cast-glass ornaments, and the fine plaster busts, vases, and groups that the Italian boys have made common elsewhere, will sooner or later find their way hither. Meantime Mother Stewart might make us fancy ourselves a hundred years older than we are. Her medical ideas are old-fashioned too. She wants my opinion what to do with her young daughter, who is subject to fits. She finds no good effect from what was affirmed to her would be a cure, -binding the backbones of three sprats upon the girl's breast when she went to bed. When her wares are checked off by the list, and I have put a pen into her hard big hand, that she may make her mark, Jane sweeps away the straw, Mrs. Stewart ties up her money in a bag, and gives me her last affectionate nod, resumes her pipe, and leaves us to prosecute our walk.

As we follow the beck (Stockbeck) in the lane, we find it so full that we can imagine how the disaster happened when the two little children from yonder farm-house were drowned here in returning from school. That farmhouse, halfway up Loughrigg, is hidden from us in the summer by the foliage of the ash trees at the bottom of my field, while it is a conspicuous and cheerful object in winter; but, winter or summer, I never look that way without thinking of those two children. The mother was doubtful in the morning about letting them go, but the father saw no reason for fear; and he was right; for the way was then clear. The children were desired not to leave the school till the maid should come for them; but the school-mistress, not dreaming of danger, sent them away when they had waited some time after school-hours. The fact was, the maid had found the meadow way impracticable, and had gone round by Rotha Bridge. Not finding the children at the school, she ran to the lane, found it flooded,-ankle-deep at first,-presently knee-deep. She called a man at work near, who waded in further, and found presently a little bag, and soon a little bonnet. The case was too clear. It was some time before the bodies were recovered. They had been swept into the deep channel of the beck, carried down and washed in among the trees, before the junction of the beck with the Rotha. Though I have often passed through that lane

We leave the beck, rushing and roaring as it does in March, and cross the meadow and Millar Bridge, and wind along the foot of Loughrigg. The fences are tufted with wall-plants, which look tempting; but we will take none of them, as we can get them in every variety at Grasmere. But before entering the birch copse of Fox How, we must help ourselves to primroses from the new clearing, where they so abound as to give a yellow hue to the hillside, as seen from our windows. The blossoms nestle under every clump of suckers, and at the base of every sprout of rock. While we have our trowels in use, we take up wood anemones and sorrel, with a view to variegating the carpet of the copse,-abounding as it does in ferns and harebells, with pansies peeping out in the sunny places. The daffodils come next. For them we have not to go far; only past Fox How and Fox Ghyll,—that ideal of a country house, with the thick grass growing up to its trellised walls, and those walls completely covered with flowering creepers in the largest variety that the climate will admit; and the whole sheltered and almost overhung by the perpendicular wooded side of Loughrigg, The next abode is Mr. Q.'s, where we must beg our daffodils. Leave given, we dig diligently under the trees and on the grassy terrace, which, in another month, will present a waving harvest of yellow blossoms. But presently we stop, saying that we shall have no room for plants from Grasmere, if we go on filling our baskets at this rate.

We do not go over Pelter Bridge, but turn up to the left, still skirting Loughrigg on its blunt end. After half a mile of miry road, between high fences, we come out upon Rydal Lake,-the exquisite little mere, with its two wooded islands sitting looking at themselves in the still waters. How every bush, and every peeping corner of gray rock is reflected in the mirror! The softened outline and hue of those graceful trees show that Spring is indeed coming on. The next time we stand here, they will be more or less green. I suppose we need not look yet for sheep upon the fells. It will be another month before they can pick a living there. Glancing round, however, we see a wild party of ragged and dirty sheep, rushing about together, as if they were scared at being at large again, or flying from the pursuit of justice, for trespass and theft in gardens, during the hungry and half-fed season which is coming to an end. May they find juicy young grass, and plenty of it, high up on the fell, that our gardens may be safe from them for another year!

There they go, over the ridge, and down into and we stop for breath at the waterfall and some invisible dell on the other side!

home of my own. The house was not finished, and strewed gooseberry skins; and ended by neither sitting-room having a floor; but the saying, that if we had but a kitchen-garden upstairs rooms were furnished enough for resi- and a pig, she should have nothing more in the dence, and the little back kitchen for cooking. world to wish. This was irresistible. I susThere was abundance of amusement in the pected that she was mistaken, and that she shifts we were put to, till our pots and pans, would find ere long, that fowls and a cow were fenders and fire-irons came from Birmingham; indispensable to perfect earthly bliss; but I and in the hurry we were in to make and put was willing to let her try for happiness on her up our window blinds; and in the care neces- own terms. The kitchen-garden was already sary in going up and down stairs, because as trenched, manured and stocked; and now we yet there were no banisters; and in the diffi- must see Mr. W.'s fine breed of pigs, and choose culty where to seat the friends who made haste one for our new piggery. We must go by the to call on me in my new capacity of resident. most beautiful way, and get our first sight this But there was a serious and sweet interest year of the Kirkstone Pass. It is a pass that about the day, which remains the permanent few venture through in winter, for fear, not impression. The weather was mild and sunny only of the drifting snow, but of the insufferall day long. That particular chestnut of Mr. | able north wind, which, rushing up the pass, Harrison's, which is always in leaf earlier than seems to pierce one's very life. In April, it is any other tree in the neighbourhood, showed cold enough; but, as we have to go in that dialready a vivid green among the tree-tops rection, we must try for a sight of the sea from round it. The crocuses in the grass looked the highest inhabited house in England, -the gay; the sorrel among the roots of the oaks in white public house at the entrance of the pass, the copse was most delicate; and as the sun to which the honour of being the highest inwent down behind the pines on the ridge of habited house in England is awarded by the Loughrigg, the yellow glow which he flung best authority-the Ordnance Surveyors, who across the valley was rich and mild. Evening have put up a board on the house signifying was come, and my room had no bedstead. I the fact. I once went up with a nephew and began to wonder whether I really was to take niece, to sleep there-partly to be able to say possession on this long wished-for day, when, that I had spent the night on such a perch, and in the last yellow light, I saw two men coming partly for the sake of the morning view. The down the hill, from the cabinet-maker's, carry-good dame is clean and tidy; but the double ing some weight between them. In an hour's time, we had made our beds,-the maids and I, and the new blinds were drawn down, and the kettle was steaming and singing, and the steady-burning lamp gave a sense of stillness such as should, on occasion, hang about a real home. Long after others were asleep, I sat in the light of the fire, feeling what it was to have entered upon the home in which I hoped to live and die; to work while I could, and rest when I could work no more, if I should indeed live so long. The next sweetest thing was the morning's waking-the rousing up to the first business of a new life.

windows are small, and scarcely a few inches will open; and, though such closeness may be necessary at such an elevation, it is anything but wholesome or agreeable. What warmth is necessary was shown by a question which the dame came in to ask while we were at tea, and which made us laugh most uncivilly. She asked whether we "preferred" sheets to our beds. The custom of the house evidently is to wrap up in blankets or rugs, in order to sleep, even in August. Well: to this house we are first to mount-taking our time for the steep and almost continuous ascent of three miles and a half. How steep it is! How soon we The weather is as fine as yesterday. That look down into the church tower, and see the is well for the sale in Troutbeck, and for J. valley mapped out below us, and find the lake and me, who mean to attend it. We wait only spreading and lengthening, and little Blelham for the post, and before eleven we are off for Tarn now glittering beyond it, over the nearer our walk of a dozen miles. We have hopes of hills-and the Langdale Pikes rearing their obtaining at the sale some of the many house- crests above the Grasmere range—and line behold articles we yet lack; and at all events, we hind line of ridges, grayer and fainter, extendmust look after a little pig at Mr. W.'s farm in ing westwards to the sea!-that is if we look Troutbeck. It was not my intention to enter behind us. If before us, the Kirkstone mounupon even that much farming, but J. had set tain swells up, bare and hard; the height her heart upon it from the time she saw the which, as Wordsworth tells us, echoed Joanfield. I found her, one spring afternoon, hover-na's laugh;" "and Kirkstone tossed it from ing about the slope, where, as she showed me, we could have a perpetual series of vegetables. She was willing to engage that the eye should never be offended with yellow cabbage leaves,

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his misty head." And now, we see the house, sitting down, as it were, at the entrance of the pass. How prodigiously steep the road looks, winding up over the heath-without fence, or

tree, or shrub-spanning the torrent, but other- | ing winds, in a scene where once all appeared wise wholly wild!

We are almost breathless when we reach the house. On the morning after our night's rest in this place, the mist was so thick we could not see a yard before us. Now, how clear it is!-cold, blue, and clear,—with a whitish line of sea on the horizon; a line which might be taken for a strip of clear sky, but for the smoke of a steamer, coming out from behind a promontory. This wide view is very fine, but I prefer the other which we are going to see: so let us be off! We leave our baskets in the porch, order bread and cheese and beer to be ready for us against our return in twenty minutes, and run on down the pass, against the cutting wind.

rigid as a mine. She draws her carpet of verdure gradually up the bare slopes, as in those swelling grounds above Hartsof, where she has deposited earth to sustain the vegetation. She is for ever covering with her exquisite mosses and ferns every spot which has been left unsightly, till nothing appears to offend the human eye, within a whole circuit of hills. She even silently rebukes and repairs the false taste of uneducated man. If he makes his new dwelling of too glaring a white, she tempers it with weather-stains. If he indolently leaves the stone walls and blue slates unrelieved by any neighbouring vegetation, she supplies the needful screen by bringing out tufts of delicate fern in the crevices, and springing coppice on the nearest slopes. She is perpetually working changes in the disposition of the waters of the region. The margins of the lakes never remain the same for half a century together. The streams bring down soft soil incessantly, which more effectually alters the currents than the slides of stones precipitated from the heights by an occasional storm. By this deposit of soil new promontories are formed and the margin contracts, till many a reach of waters is converted into land inviting tillage. The flats below us, and all the greenest levels of the smaller valleys, may be seen to have been once lakes. And while she is thus closing up in one direction, she is opening in another. In some low-lying spot a tree falls, which acts as a dam when the next rains come. The detained waters sink, and penetrate, and loosen the roots of other trees; and the moisture which they formerly absorbed, goes to swell the accumulation, till the place becomes a swamp. The drowned vegetation decays and sinks, leaving more

There is the Kirk Stone, which gives its name to the pass; the block which, from a certain point of view, seen against the sky, is very like a little church. What a mass of débris it is that it surmounts! It has struck 'me, when standing between this point and the lake, Brothers Water-which now opens upon us at the bottom of the pass, how we have before the eye in one view, the various results of the action of nature in a mountainous region, and especially by the agency of water. There are tarns among the hills on the right; Hay's Water, where the angler goes for a day of solitary sport; and Angle Tarn on Place Fell: and these tarns gratify, not only by their beauty, but by the sense of use which attends the perception of their beauty. Their use is to cause such a distribution of the waters as may fertilize without inundating the lands below. After rains, if the waters all came pouring down at once, the vales would be flooded: as it is, the nearer brooks swell, and pour them selves out into the main stream-as now the little torrents are feeding the beck in the midstroom, till the place becomes a pool, on whose of the pass, which rushes down into Brothers Water. Meanwhile, the springs are busy in the same way above, emptying themselves into the tarns. By the time the streams in the valley are subsiding, the upper tarns are full and begin to overflow: and now the overflow can be received in the valley without injury. While always ready for this occasional work, nature is also eternally busy at more regular processes, which do not show from day to day, but are very striking after a course of years. She disintegrates the rocks, and now and then sends down masses, like the Kirk Stone itself, thundering along the ravines, or to bridge a chasm, or to make a new islet in a pool. She sows her seeds in crevices, or on little projections, so that the bare face of the precipice becomes like that above Brothers Water yonder, feathered with the rowan and the birch; and thus, ere long, motion is produced by the pass-with the levels of the valleys: they encroach

bristling margin the snipe arrives to rock on the bulrush, and the heron wades in the waterlilies, to feed on the fish which come there no one knows how. As the waters spread, they encounter natural dams, behind which they grow clear and deeper, till we have a tarn among the hills, which attracts the browsing flocks, and tempts the shepherd to build his hut near the brink. Then the wild swans see the glittering expanse in their flight, and drop down into it; and the waterfowl make their nests among the reeds. This brings the sportsman, and a path is trodden over the hills, and the spot becomes a place of human resort. While nature is thus working transformations in her deeper retreats, the generations of men are more obviously busy in conspicuous places. They build their houses and plant their orchards on the slopes which connect the mountains