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COLLOQUY VI.

WALLA CRAG.-OWEN OF LANARK.

It is no wonder that foreigners, who form their notions of England from what they see in its metropolis, should give such dismal descriptions of an English November; a month when, according to the received opinion of continental writers, suicide comes as regularly in season with us as geese at Michaelmas, and green pease in June. Nothing indeed can be more cheerless and comfortless than a common November day in that huge overgrown city; the streets covered with that sort of thick greasy, dirt, on which you are in danger of slipping at every step, and the sky concealed from sight by a dense, damp, oppressive, dusky atmosphere, composed of Essex fog and London smoke. But in the country November presents a very different aspect: there its soft, calm weather has a charm of its own; a stillness and serenity unlike any other season, and scarcely

less delightful than the most genial days of Spring. The pleasure which it imparts is rather different in kind than inferior in degree: it accords as finely with the feelings of declining life as the bursting foliage and opening flowers of May with the elastic spirits of youth and hope.

But a fine day affects children alike at all seasons as it does the barometer. They live in the present, seldom saddened with any retrospective thoughts, and troubled with no foresight. Three or four days of dull sunless weather had been succeeded by a delicious morning. My young ones were clamorous for a morning's excursion. The glass had risen to a little above change, but their spirits had mounted to the point of settled fair. All things, indeed, animate and inanimate, seemed to partake of the exhilarating influence. The blackbirds, who lose so little of their shyness even where they are most secure, made their appearance on the green, where the worms had thrown up little circles of mould during the night. The smaller birds were twittering, hopping from spray to spray, and pluming themselves; and as the temperature had given them a vernal sense of joy, there was something of a vernal cheerfulness in their song. The very flies

had come out from their winter quarters, where, to their own danger and my annoyance, they establish themselves behind the books, in the folds of the curtains, and the crevices of these loose window-frames. They were crawling up the sunny panes, bearing in their altered appearance the marks of uncomfortable age; their bodies enlarged, and of a greyer brown; their wings no longer open, clean, and transparent, but closed upon the back, and as it were encrusted with neglect. Some few were beginning to brush themselves, but their motions were slow and feeble: the greater number had fallen upon their backs, and lay unable to recover themselves. Not a breath of air was stirring; the smoke ascended straight into the sky, till it diffused itself equally on all sides and was lost. The lake lay like a mirror, smooth and dark. The tops of the mountains, which had not been visible for many days, were clear and free from snow: a few light clouds, which hovered upon their sides, were slowly rising and melting in the sunshine.

On such a day, a holyday having been voted by acclamation, an ordinary walk would not satisfy the children:..it must be a scramble among the mountains, and I must accompany them;..it would do me good, they knew it

would;..they knew I did not take sufficient exercise, for they had heard me sometimes say So. One was for Skiddaw Dod, another for Causey Pike, a third proposed Watenlath; and I, who perhaps would more willingly have sate at home, was yet in a mood to suffer violence, and making a sort of compromise between their exuberant activity and my own inclination for the chair and the fireside, fixed upon Walla Crag. Never was any determination of sovereign authority more willingly received: it united all suffrages: Oh yes! yes! Walla Crag! was the unanimous reply. Away they went to put on coats and clogs, and presently were ready each with her little basket to carry out the luncheon, and bring home such treasures of mosses and lichens as they were sure to find. Off we set; and when I beheld their happiness, and thought how many enjoyments they would have been deprived of, if their lot had fallen in a great city, I blest God who had enabled me to fulfil my heart's desire and live in a country such as Cumberland.

The walk on which we had agreed has just that degree of difficulty and enterprize wherein children delight and may safely be indulged. I lived many years at Keswick before I explored it; but it has since been a favourite

excursion with all my guests and resident friends who have been active and robust enough to accomplish the ascent. You leave the Borrodale road about a mile and half from the town, a little before it opens upon the terrace, and, crossing a wall by some stepping stones, go up the wood, having a brook, or what in the language of the country is called a beck, on the right hand. An artist might not long since have found some beautiful studies upon this beck, in its short course through the wood, where its craggy sides were embowered with old trees, the trunks of which, as well as their mossy branches, bent over the water: I scarcely know any place more delightful than this was in a sultry day, for the fine composition of the scene, its refreshing shade and sound, and the sense of deep retirement;.. but the woodman has been there! A little higher up you cross a wall and the elbow of a large tree that covers it; you are then upon the side of the open fell, shelving down to the stream, which has worked for itself a narrow ravine below. After a steep ascent you reach one of those loose walls which are common in this country; it runs across the side of the hill, and is broken down in some places; the easier way, or rather the less difficult, is onthe inner side, over loose and rugged stones,