are the lads and lasses "to fetch in the May?" They are gone for ever-together with the Palace, where tournaments and galliards were once rife, and which was a chosen seat of song in the days of

"Those flights upon the banks of Thames

Which so did take Eliza and our James."

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There is an old view, engraved in Nicholls' Progresses,' of Richmond Hill and the Palace, in its turretted splendour. On the opposite shore, now known as Twickenham Park, the print shows us a merry group of Morrice - dancers with the Hobby-horse. These, too, are gone with the Mayers. Well; let us endeavour to keep the spirit, if not the forms, of old English cheerfulness. A merry peal is ringing out from some distant church tower. There is the tower -that of Kingston-seen through the frame of those noble oaks. The whole scene is a picture-it has all the elements of a picture—it is complete in itself. Foreground-bright hawthorns; middle distance-meadows, with hedge-row elms, dimly seer, and therefore beautiful; central object—the tower, bounded by tall lars; background-blue hills, rising one above the other, till they are lost in the misty distance. We move on twenty yards, and the picture is gone; the combination is destroyed. Another mile-by a charming lodge embosomed in lilacs and laburnums-will carry us down the hill, out of the Park at the Kingston gate. Here are some of the materials that made the picture-but how changed! The hedgerow elms stand up in formal ugliness, like cauliflowers run to seed; the willows are horrid pollards; we see that the tower, so graceful in the distance, has been beautified according to the fashions of the Georgian era. Moral: seize upon the picturesque gladly when you by chance find it—that is, if you know what is the picturesque; seize upon your happiness in the same way—that is, if you know what is happiness. Never go prying like a surveyor into the plains which looked so beautiful in the distance, in the hope of improving them by a closer view; never go into an analysis of what makes you happy, summing up the units of your gratification, and wondering how they have become a good round number. Imagine Kingston passed through. It is a nice quiet town, with some pretty houses on the Thames bank, and moreover has something to say about early kings, and all that. But our present business is with the ever-during freshness of the teeming earth. We are in Hampton Wick-on the edge of Bushy Park. Truth to tell, we have brought you this long walk, chiefly for the purpose of showing you Bushy Park. Somewhere on the banks of the Thames-in a publichouse, not a hotel, (we are not ashamed of our Cockney porter any more than of our Cockney poetry), have we seen the immortal representation of the man who gave you and us the right of entering Bushy Park by this easy stile. The Cobbler of Hampton Wick, Timothy Bennett, was a real patriot in the days when a minister's gold did its straightforward work effectually-the good old days of honest pay for willing hire. The print of Timothy Bennett, ætat. seventy-five, in

the year 1752, tells us, if we remember rightly, that he, "being unwilling to leave the world worse than he found it, by a vigorous application of the laws of his country, obtained a free passage through Bushy Park, which had long been withheld from the people." Honour to the Hampton Wick cobbler-the "village Hampden," who the great "tyrant of his fields withstood." It was no joke to battle with the Crown; but the Cobbler was triumphant. Thus has everything good in our institutions been won, inch by inch. Well; the man who was unwilling to leave the world worse than he found it, had the good taste also to prefer a wide park to a dusty road under a dreary wall. How he must have rejoiced, in his victorious old age, when he rested himself under the shadow of that forest of hawthorns-the slow growth of centuriesthat he had opened these enjoyments to the common people. Perhaps he was only thinking of a shorter cut to Teddington. Be it so. Taste is sure to follow in the steps of a well-directed utility.

But the Chestnut avenue of Bushy! We cry you mercy. You recollect something about that same chestnut avenue; and you now know that we have come thus far to look upon it. We have passed the hawthorn thicket, and are in the avenue. But these are limes! True. Another avenue: but these are limes and elms blended! Are they not of wondrous beauty, in their loftiness and gracefulness? But the Chestnut avenue! Look then across the road, upon those dark masses of a single tree, with thousands of spiral flowers, each flower a study, powdering over the rich green from the lowest branch to the topmost twig. Now you shall have a real reward for your three hours' toil under a lustrous sun. Look up and down this wondrous avenue. Its mile length seems a span ;—but from one gate to the other, there is a double line of unbroken green, with flowers, rich as the richest of the tropics, contending for the mastery of colour. Saw you ever such a gorgeous sight? Fashionable London even comes to see it; but in the Whitsun-week, and during the some twenty days of the glories of the chestnut, thousands of those who have "the true city calenture" will come here to rejoice in the exceeding beauty of this marvel of nature, which the art of the Dutch gardeners, whom William of Nassau brought to teach us, have left as a proud relic of their taste. Never ought the "prolixity of shade" to be " obsolete," whilst it can produce such scenes as this great avenue of Bushy!

Another mile through the pretty village of Teddington, and we will try a new pleasure. Courteous stranger, who hast accompanied us thus far on our day's pilgrimage, you shall have rest and enjoyment together. We find at the Ferry a capacious pleasureboat, with steady John Francis, ready to scull us down to Richmond-bridge. Ah! your steam-boat has no charm like this! There is the brass band on board the steam-boat, frightening the very swans out of any faith in music-for the brass band has no‘dying fall;' there is the eternal boom of the engine; the paddle

wheel destroys the silver mirror of the stream; the steamer is altogether too fast, and noisy, and populous for our Thames. But the little boat, gliding with the stream, scarcely leaves a ripple. Again, we say, give yourself up wholly to the charm of the marvellous light which decks the commonest things as with a robe' of loveliness. Sit you quiet, as in a dream. Is that Strawberry Hill? Yes. It is lath and plaster, is it not? Never heed that; it peeps as gracefully out of its trees, as if it were Corinthian marble. Where is Pope's Villa? Pulled down: that flaunty red SwissChinese-Gothic affair stands in its place. But there is compensation. Look at the exquisite picture formed by Twickenham Church, and the island-trees that divide the stream. What is that island called? EelPie Island: never mind its unpoetical name. There: you are catching the first glance of Richmond Hill; and now you glide by the halls where the schoolmaster-king sheltered in the days of persecution, and pass villa after villa, trimmed up in all the luxury of

Hood, a true poet, has sung their praises in his exquisite verses, 'The Elm Tree.' Read them at your leisure. You are now in a somewhat anti-poetical mood: you begin to feel a monitor within; and mark out the house at Bridge-foot, or Hill-top, where you hope to dine. You will choose for yourself. We acknowledge you have earned the right, if you possess the means, to dine upon the best; and Richmond inns have long since learnt the policy of reasonable charges.

Good evening. Do not forget the time of the last train. If you are not over-tired, look upon the river, as it sleeps under the May-moon.

We may take Preston as a converging point, where ramblers and tourists from various quarters will come to a focus, before proceeding northward. First the Liverpool and Birkenhead folk (as matters are at present) will travel eastward along the Liverpool and Manchester line, as far as Parkside, and then northward, along the North Union Railway to Preston; but when the Liverpool, Ormskirk, and Preston line is finished (the works of which are now in progress), a shorter route will be available. Next we have the southrons generally, who-coming from London or from Birmingham, from the Pottery districts of Staffordshire, or the Salt districts of Cheshire-will pass through Warrington to Parkside, and so on to Preston. Then the mighty heart of Manchester, with its busy knot of neighbours-Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Ashton, Stalybridge, Stockport, Hyde-and its more distant companions in industry-Sheffield, &c.,-these will send forth their Lake-tourists, by way of the Manchester, Bolton, and Preston line. And the West Riding, too, shall it not pour out its thousands, when the Preston district is (as it will be ere long) placed in railway connexion with it by way of Colne and Todmorden? When all these arteries of communication are opened, the distance from Preston will be pretty nearly equal by the five distinct routes, from Liverpool, Warrington, Manchester, Todmorden, and Colne. Thus, then, let our tourists accompany us in imagination; arriving from any or all of these districts at Preston, and thence proceeding onward to the Lakes. And not merely in imagination-the die is cast; a commencement has been made; and we may speak of this Lake touring as a system belonging to the age' and the land we live in.' Within a few days of the printing of this sheet, the first Excursion Train' has performed the trip, from the cotton districts to Windermere itself; and whoever has marked the mode in which these railway visits spread around and abroad, may prophecy with tolerable surety that the field thus opened will not be allowed to lie barren. For a fare of something like a halfpenny per mile, (such are the arrangements of holiday-trains!) Whitsun parties have been conveyed from Preston and from Lancaster, to Windermere; and other inducements are being laid open, for the establishment of more frequent but somewhat higher-priced visits.

Onward we go, then, along the Preston and Lancaster Railway. Of Preston itself' Proud Preston,' as the Lancastrians call it, occupying a fine position on the brow of a hill, the smoky features are those which are most likely to attract the notice of one who

Little, save an undulating series of Lancashire hills, calls for the notice of the tourist from Preston past Garstang to Lancaster; but at the last-named ancient city we come to what may fairly be considered the outer margin of the Lake district; bearing, in the south-east, some such relation to it as Carlisle does in the northeast. Some time before approaching the station Lancaster Castle is seen towering loftily above the whole of the town; and, as seen from the station at its foot, gives a foretaste of the elevated heights which are shortly to meet the eye. It is true that the hill on which this castle stands is not the loftiest of castlehills; yet it comes with welcome on the sight after the flatter districts of South Lancashire. On a fine day Peel Castle in Walney Island, Ingleborough Hill in Yorkshire, and the lofty' Black Comb' in Cumberland, can be seen from the terrace of the Castle; and the whole county, for ten or fifteen miles distant, is spread out as a map to the view. The principal church of the city, too, placed on the summit of the hill, in close juxta-position with the Castle, has a grandeur of site which, probably few parish churches in England can equal. The ascent to this church is by broad and long flights of steps from the centre of the town; and when the churchyard at the summit is gained, the whole broad expanse of the Lancaster Sands meets the eye at once, carrying the view over towards Cartmell, Ulverstone, and Walney Island. The river Lune passes by Lancaster on the north side, towards its embouchure in Morecambe Bay; and the three viaducts across this river, by the great North Road, the Lancaster and Kendal Canal, and the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway, have a fine effect as seen from the Castle Terrace. (Cut, No. 2.)

The railway traveller who stops not at Lancaster, but hastens on in pursuit of pleasure or of business towards Kendal, must take upon trust this account of the view from Lancaster Castle; but he will soon have an opportunity of knowing something of the remarkable Sands' which completely sever the county of Lancaster into two parts. Before, however, starting from Lancaster, it may be well to say a word or two respecting that fine and bold enterprise, the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway,

When the railway system had been carried along the east coast as far as Newcastle, and on the west coast as far as Lancaster, the question arose-How shall we reach Scotland? Shall we make an eastern route via Newcastle and Berwick to Edinburgh; or shall we go from Haltwhistle, on the Newcastle and Carlisle line, over the Carter Fell, into Scotland; or from Carlisle by Hawick to Edinburgh, and by Beattock to Glasgow ;