faded gilding upon them; queer mahogany cabinets, obese and bow-legged, adorned with lacquered metalwork; water-colour sketches very early and very pale; ingenious devices in silver, almost worn away by much polishing; implements of sport and of the field-saddle and bridle, boot and spur, hook and net; and, last, many an old folio-sermon or history or devotion-resting still in its ponderous and musty calf binding.

It is not difficult to shape for oneself the kind of life which people must have led in an ancient house like this long before the poet Gray had so much as discovered the country. What delightful summer days they must have had, when the old-fashioned garden with all its sweet posies was in bloom, and when the bees were out on the fells; and what wild winter nights, when even Keswick would be cut off, and when Dunmail Raise was blocked with snow! A lonely, leisurely, uneventful, and yet, withal, an eminently comfortable life. Among the bookish treasures which I turned over here, perhaps the most fruitful in making the past familiar to me was a manuscript volume of cookery recipes, the 'painful ' record left by some notable housewife of the last century. It bears the date 1721, and is written in the large, upright, and ornate hand of the period. There

was at any rate no stint of cunningly-devised dainties in those days. We read of how to make 'strong mead' and how to make 'small mead,' along with many other comforting drinks; and how to make 'rare sweet water.' Think what water it must have been when this was the initial process: 'Take marjoram, lavender, rosemary, muscovy, thyme, walnutleaves, damask roses, and pinks.' And here is a recipe in full, which I give with all its quaintness and singularity of spelling :

To make Gelles of Currens.

Pull ye Currens when they are Drye and pick them, and put a few Rasps to it, if you have them; and Sufuse them in an Earthen pott all night over the fire in a Cettle full of water; but mind that ye water Do not gett into ye pott; then squese them in your hands and strain them through a Cloth, taking care of ye seeds that they goe not in; and to Every pint of Serrip a pound of Double Refined Shugar, and beat it; put your Shugar in; Set it over Clear Coals and Lett it boyle up, and Scum it, if there be need, then put in your Serrip, Letting it not boyle; Always stirring it till you think it will Cette, which you may know by Dropping A Little upon a plate, and Lett it Stand till it be cold; but take care you let it not be over Stif, and when you think it is Right, then take it of ye fire and put it in your Glases hott, this will serve for any other Gelles.

It seems to me that the spring is less advanced here than at home. The snowdrops are plentiful and very lovely, growing, not as with us in single tufts,

but thickly together in white patches, like daisies, under the trees and on the grass, There are large bunches of them set on the table at meals; they look wintry, but the smell of them, faint like the primrose, is very charming. The only other plant which I can discover in flower is the gorse, and that is but just breaking its bud. In the woods there is no new leafage yet. The whole landscape might be painted in three colours-brown, green, and grey. The spray of the trees is brown, the bracken on the mountains is brown, and the deep drift of leaves and beech-nuts in the hollows and under the hedges is brown; the grass, and the ubiquitous moss, and the laurels are green; while the tree-stems and the skies are grey.

Sailing on the lake, we see that there are still streaks of snow on Helvellyn Low Man. The wind is north-west, and the sky is clouded; but sometimes there is a bit of fleeting blue; and now and then a momentary and unexplained gleam of sunlight lying on the broad shoulder of some distant mountain makes one think of Bunyan's Land of Beulah.

The birds are plentiful. They seem to have fine covert under the thick, round bushes of laurel; there are many finches, the green-finch being most beautiful and conspicuous. I saw several flocks of wild ducks. cross the lake; there was also the black-and-white

winged gooseander, and two or three herons; one of these lighted upon a fir-tree, and a queer object he looked, swinging about and stretching forth his long neck. I must not forget to mention a little wren, no bigger than a plum, who was standing on the top of a pollard-willow. He nodded to me as I passed, as if to say 'good morning,' and then turned into his house, which was a hole in the tree.

The tourist, who is making the usual rush from Grasmere to Keswick, seldom gets more than a glimpse of the Vale of St. John; but no valley in the district would better repay quiet and careful examination. It is wide enough for a vale, yet in places it has the romantic character of a gorge, and very grandly is it walled in by the pyramidal forms of Saddleback. Sir Walter Scott calls it

The narrow valley of Saint John,
Down sloping to the western sky.

And his further description is not inapt:

Paled in by many a lofty hill,

The narrow dale lay smooth and still,
And, down its verdant bosom led,
A winding brooklet found its bed.
But, midmost of the vale, a mound
Arose, with airy turrets crown'd,
Buttress, and rampire's circling bound,"
And mighty keep and tower.

We found this vale full of refreshing contrast and healing influence as we wandered along it on Sunday morning to the small church at the farther or northern end. There was a little sunshine on the hedges, and I could detect the new leaves of the wild-strawberry, the celandine, and the wood-sorrel. How perfect was the stillness-perfect because broken, but broken only by the fall of distant water, the low chirp of birds, and the sough of the wind. The church, as usual in this country, is a lowly building. You enter the yard under an arch of thick holly and box-the holly still carries its red berries-and there is a willow trained round the porch; the graves are mostly nameless, but the snowdrop carries its white memorial over rich and poor alike.

To-day I have been to Rydal, and looked in upon an old artist friend, who now, wisely enough, makes his home there. We found him lovingly at work on a sprig of willow, trying to realise the poet's description of the

Satin-shining palm

On sallows in the windy gleams of March.

Happy painter! his life is his work, and his work is only the religious love of nature expressed in act! There was misty rain on the hills, but Rydal cannot be spoiled, and everything was touched with quiet