RAMBLES BY RIVERS.

THE DUDDON.

THERE are few objects in nature more beautiful or more refreshing to eye and ear than a mountainstream. To a healthy mind it almost seems to impart something of its own lively flow, and bold and buoyant energy. Itself a happy emblem of the purity and vigour of poetic genius, it has ever been an especial favourite with all poets: our own noble band, from Spenser to Wordsworth, have celebrated it in snatches of description, or brief allusions, or fuller and more prolonged notes—

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Murmuring near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own."

Southey, in speaking of one of them, says, "I could sit for hours to watch the motions of a brook." And he must be dull indeed who could wander without emotion along one that has been sung of by a great poet; or not have the feeling its natural beauty may arouse deepened by association with the genius it has inspired.

In the autumn of 1842 we spent some time near the Duddon, the stream which forms the subject of Wordsworth's fine poem of that title; and it has occurred to us that we may be able to impart a

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little information to the admirer of his poetry, perhaps even to lead some of our readers who may be about to travel in the lake district to vary the usual route by devoting two or three days to exploring a stream so beautifully described by our great philosophic poet. The Duddon rises on Wrynose Fell, and divides the counties of Cumberland and Lancashire for about twenty-five miles, from its source till it enters the Irish Sea near the Isle of Walney. It is navigable only near its termination, and then but at high tide and by small craft; indeed throughout its course it is scarcely at all serviceable to man, hardly a mill being worked by it. Nor does it, like many other of the mountain-streams, anywhere expand into a lake or even a tarn; yet, even in this region of rivers, it is perhaps unequalled. It runs through a remarkably wild and picturesque country, and presents aspects singularly varied considering the shortness of its course. Wordsworth, in his Scenery of the Lakes,' "It says, may be compared, such and so varied are its beauties, with any river of equal length in any country." However that may be, it is surpassed by none in the northern counties. Green, indeed, and he is no mean judge, places the Croglin and Eden first, while Southey puts in a word for his Keswick Greta, and every one remembers Scott's description of its Yorkshire namesake: it is, however, to none of these we are disposed to think Duddon must yield; but we are not so certain as to the Wharfe. Be that as it may, our stream is very beautiful, and it is surprising that so few visit it. Hardly one visitor of the thousands who annually resort to the lakes does more than cross it. The country on either side of it is thinly peopled,

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