dred, and not a moon waxes and wanes but some ship goes down. All this calamity, too, is compressed within geographical limits so narrow that it cannot fail to impress itself upon the mind.— The particular disaster may be forgotten but the general and continuing distress is remembered, and the sea that washes England is inevitably associated with the idea of supreme danger beyond that of any other part of the globe. I say that this everpresent sense of danger does, in hind the Princess Royal Hotel, a and other signs, and all along this most admirable point for a pano- Northern coast you will see on ramic view, and still from what- the Chart a black dotted line of ever spot you enjoy the prospect, human sorrow, which runs, to be it is the boundless, unchangeable, sure, in a nearly unbroken course yet ever changing sea, the bright, quite around the island. You broad, gleaming, many-dimpled will find the mournful statistics of sea, which enchants you. I think the loss of human life to reach the sea is much sublimer viewed beyond one thousand every year, from the English, than from the sometimes it reaches fifteen hunAmerican shores. One sees more of it from the tops of beetling cliffs than from the low sandy strips of coast line, and then the element of extreme peril mingles a deeper sentiment of awe with the admiration it excites. As we stand looking far away along the margin of this German Ocean, the eye rests on headlands only that rear themselves directly from the waves which dash against their bases, and the whole shore is yearly strewn with the wrecks of commerce. Yonder is a lofty rock some miles off, Flamborough some degree, enhance the subHead, whose beacon many a mariner has seen for the last thing on earth as he was whelmed beneath the wave, and you may go up and down the coast and not a port or hamlet where Mr. Kingsley's little ballad of the fishers might not be claimed for its own. There is a publication of the Admiralty or the Board of Trade, I know not which, entitled the Wreck Chart of Great Britain-it is one of the "annuals" but quite different from the Christmas books-which is a startling thing to look at indeed. On it, the spots where ships have gone on the rocks and become a total loss, or foundered, during the year are indicated by little black disks, while smaller disasters are marked with crosses limity of the ocean view, or heighten its effect upon the beholder; certainly the sea exerts in its calmer moods, a greater fascination by reason of this element of peril, as the beauty of ferocious animals wins us more than that of docile ones. O the treacherous, faithless sea! How beautiful, how peaceful, how loving, it seems now, in halcyon rest, with the gleams flying over it, and a dozen sail here and there, upon its bosom, and the landward wave beating so gently against the beach that it just kisses the pebbles and then glides off again, and anon you shall see it terrible in its wrath, hurling itself in great masses against the rocks and prevailing even over these, in the unequal conflict of the property and the preservation six thousand years! and good order of the grounds, As Yorkshire possesses the no- and as this is done in the interest blest cathedral, so it can boast of the traveling public, it is but the finest ruin in all England, fair the traveling public should that of Fountain's Abbey. To bear the charge. Without giving reach this one stops at the little an opinion upon the matter, Icantown (or rather city, for, though not help saying here that, guides containing not more than 7000 in- in general being nuisances, the habitants, it has a cathedral and guide at Studley Park was the palace of a Bishop) of Ripon, most intolerable bore I ever met which the reader will take notice with. He may not have been a is pronounced as if spelt with a depraved nor yet a malignant perduplicate p-Rippon. A short son, and his countenance did not walk or drive from this place leads indicate a nature either of utter to Studley Park, the seat of Earl depravity or fiendish malignity, de Grey and Ripon, within whose and I think that I have wholly extensive grounds the ruin is sit- forgiven him, but forget him I uated. A broad avenue, a mile cannot, and somebody will, one in length, edged with stately trees, of these days, recover heavy damstretches in a straight line from ages from Earl de Grey in an acthe outer gateway to that por- tion of false imprisonment based tion of the grounds, where the vis- upon the conduct of that man toitor turns off to get to the Abbey, wards the pilgrims to Fountain's and here will be found porter's Abbey. Having passed into the lodge and visitors' book, with grounds, you must not leave him, peremptory payment of a shilling you must not interrupt his narraand optional inscription of one's tive, you must not look except as name, and here the visitor gives he instructs you, you are no more himself in charge to one of the permitted to wander at your own vassals of Earl de Grey, and with sweet will than is the little river other victims is conducted off to Skell which flows through a glade see the ruins by "the long way, naturally picturesque, and beauthe middle way, or the short way," tified by some magnificent elms as he may prefer. It has often and beeches, but which is so forcbeen the subject of complaint with ed into stiff cascades and spread foreigners, that the English no- out into stagnant lakes of regular bleman makes the public pay the geometrical shapes bordered with expense of keeping up his park, hammered stone that one would in the shilling entrance fee to be glad to escape from this prim great show places, ruins and the formalism of landscape gardening like. Something may, indeed, be into a Carolina swamp or a Georsaid on both sides the question, as gia pine barren. All manner of that the ownership of such a ruin questionable ornaments are scatas Fountain's Abbey involves the tered through the grounds such as employment of many servants the Temple of Fame and the Temas a police for the protection of ple of Piety, both of which look uncommonly like ice-cream boxes away, for Nature builds better at Cremorne, and the guide at than man, yet the yew trees will last conducts you circuitously die out, too, and then one recalls around a hill to Anne Boleyn's the old lines about the cloud-capt seat, where, having placed you towers and gorgeous palaces and under an arbor he suddenly throws the great globe itself, and retraces open the opposite doors revealing his steps musingly, along "the the grand old wreck of the Abbey short way" this time, to smile at in the distance, seen as in a picture frame or in a tableau at the Princess' Theatre. From this you descend directly to the ruins where you may profit by the extent of the surface, and the friendly walls, to get a few moments to yourself for a quiet observation of the majestic pile. the gimcrack Temple of Fame that wants a new coat of paint very badly, and to moralize in his own manner on the emptiness of human ambition. The vast extent of Fountain`s Abbey and the beauty of the spot, and the grandeur of the ruins all considered, it seems strange that so little is known of it by Americans who have not visited Yorkshire, and we may discover the reason in the fact that the old walls which the ivy has over-run have never been festooned with the verses of a Scott or a Wordsworth, such as have long ago consecrated Melrose and Tintern in the affections of all lovers of English poetry. It was the poetic association chiefly that led me out of my way in the extreme North of Yorkshire, to visit Rokeby, the seat of The monastery originally covered a space of ten or twelve acres, we are told, but the ruins are embraced within an area of two acres. There are beautiful cloisters and a magnificent tower, quite perfect, which the stone masons were at work upon while Columbus was tossing about on the Atlantic looking for his new world, (the tower bears the date of 1494) and a great east window, the tracery all gone, but the arch still lifting itself sixty feet above the pavement; and there are monumental slabs of abbots and bish- Sir Walter's friend, Mr. Morritt, ops with Latin inscriptions nearly and the scene of Sir Walter's effaced, and over all is written, poem of that name. Rokeby is "Vanitas vanitatum," over the three miles from Barnard Castle, tombs and the tower, over nave a small village in the County of and transept, vanity of vanities! Durham, which is here divided so perishes the work of man's from Yorkshire by the brawling hands, and all of mere material river Tees, and the walk on the greatness he may attempt. There Yorkshire side leads past the are three old yew trees in the ruins of Athelstane Abbey, a corner yonder, twelve hundred small bit of Gothic work that was years old, Mr. Black says, and fine in its day, to the "Morritt the guide repeats the story, and Arms" a roadside inn where the these yew trees have seen the guide awaits the traveler on Abbey rise and flourish and pass Thursdays and Saturdays. The O Brignall banks are wild and fair, little river Greta flows through ple read Scott's Poems-the whole the estate and joins the Tees at of them-now; the complete set a point not far from the mansion. is still published in one volThe spot is exceedingly rugged ume as a gift book, but young and picturesque. The Greta has people do not talk now in hall and been left to find its own way to bower of the heroines, nor sing the meeting of the waters and to the songs which Sir John Stevenbabble its own music in its course. son set to music, and the old tireNo tricks have been played with some reflection fuimus comes Nature as at Studley, there is no again, as I leave Rokeby and cross Temple of Piety or of Fame, but Greta Bridge. But what strain is in place of it an old summer this which I seem to hear? house, and a table therein, at which Sir Walter used to sit and write, both summer house and table the worse for the knives of tourists, the same who have car- There are Greta woods and not ried off the original nails of the far off are Brignall banks, but as I house of Shakspeare's nativity, recall the lines, I recall also a and had them made into miniature time dim and distant, and a home horse-shoes for the watch-chain. in Virginia, and an old piano What a pleasant thing to have forte that was often struck to come upon Sir Walter in his them, and even now gives out the favorite haunt, and to have heard music of them, which comes to him read some of those ringing me, over ever so many years and octo-syllabics of his, while the ink over miles of ocean, faint but clear was still wet upon the paper! like the horns of Elfland. In They have had their day, those that time, dim and distant, I medieval chivalric stories told in thought Greta woods and Briglines of eight syllables, and had nall banks were fairy land. And been forgotten mostly, save the now I wave them an adieu, stepballads and certain descriptive ping from Athelstane Bridge into passages, had not the wizard Durham again, and bless Sir struck out the novels and thus Walter's memory, and say that of given the poems another lease of all our poets no one has written fame and popularity. Few peo- such songs as his. SONNET. "Ah! then I know Queen Mab hath been with you, Romeo and Juliet. Blessings upon the tricksy Fay whose wand Caught from the Muse who guided Shakspear's hand: Full Eastward, drinking sunrise! Earth and wave The grounds were very elegant- gentleman, a servant with a long ly arranged. There were squares white apron, holding a silver and circles and every imaginable waiter under his arm, appeared geometrical figure, marked by before us. divisions of box, within which "Ladies and Mr. Alfred, will grew the rarest and most beauti- you please walk in to some reful flowers, sometimes circling freshments, mistress says?" around an evergreen of deep, rich foliage, shooting up in a pyramidal spire while its trunk was embedded in a little circle of fuchias or verbenas. "There," said Adéle demurely, "I thought she would not trust you long, Alfred.” "My mother knows that I am in very dangerous company," he replied, bowing his smiling face, no wonder she fears for her 66 son." "Tra-la-la," cried Adéle, floating from us with a waltzing movement, that seemed to raise me and my bewildered senses into |