morning, that I found myself, after traversing several miles of brown moor, at the entrance of one of the deep, wild, and romantic delves or dells of Derbyshire. An entrance between two rocks conducted me into a kind of rude hall, which, rising pillar over pillar, presented to fancy the rudiments of architecture, roughhewn by Nature from her everlasting rocks. The floor was bedded with grass, and sprinkled with flowers; while the rocky walls, gray, and sending from their seams and joints thousands of shrubs and flowers, ascended many feet, and, bending over like a dome, left a space which the ingenuity of man had formerly supplied with a window. Through this rude aperture, the sky, now colouring fast with the morning light, was seen overhead, while the flowers and shrubs, desirous of light and heat, directed their heads towards the opening, and some of them, climbing through, waved dewy and green from the summit. An opening, or door, overlooked the deep and beautiful dell below, into which a zig-zag pathway-more the labour of nature than of man, descended abruptly; and down in the bottom I heard the plash and gurgle of a small brooklet, or spring, which dropped from the walls of rock through a thousand fissures.

Before I descended by this rude pathway into the dell, I turned to look on the natural temple, or church, of rock. The walls bore token to many vicissitudes of occupation-the haunt of birds of prey-of robbersof anchorites-of outlaws-perhaps of bold and romantic Robin Hood -of lovers' meetings of a burial ground, and a church. Here were bended bows, and cloth-yard arrows, and flying deer, carved-the names of lover and maiden-the sign of the cross-a kneeling hermit-inscriptions recording those hurried by violence to the grave, or carried by the fulness of years: the rude outline of a skull above, and of an hourglass below, sufficiently intimated their original purpose. Above this, and placed between two of the pillars, a kind of pulpit projected, and seemed still frequented from devotion or curiosity, for its notched pathway was marked by recent feet. Over one of its corners hung a chap

let of flowers fresh pulled, and moist with morning dew; and below I could perceive where some one had lately knelt, for the grass was still bruised down-early as my coming was, visitors had been there before me.

While I stood looking on the chaplet, I heard a voice, slow and prolonged, coming from the dell below. It seemed the feeble and tremulous voice of old age, and scarcely made its way above the rocky barrier with which the place was bounded. To this another voice was presently added

gentle, and sweet, and piercing: it seemed the note of sixteen mingling with that of seventy. I glided forward, and looked down into the bosom of the dell. For some time I saw nothing, save a slender stream winding and shining like a serpent among the grass and flowers-the upright and light gray walls which hemmed in, from the upland waste, this romantic nook-and a raven, large and old, seated on an opposite crag, watching, with an outstretched neck, something which it marked for prey below. I took another step, and stood on a projecting ledge, which overhung the dell, and there I saw below me an old manhis head white with age as the driven snow, seated beside a small fountain, which, descending like a thread of silver from the upper rock, filled and o'erbrimmed a basin of hewn stone, and then, escaping into the little brooklet, marked out its way with a moister and livelier green. He was tall and straight; labour and old age had failed in pulling down the external elegance of a frame once sinewy and strongthe dust of the way was on his shoes —a staff and a crust of bread lay beside him he was silent, and seemed about to busy himself in private devotion-his hands were closely clasped, and his eyes were cast on a small mound that might be a grave, by the side of the fountain. A fair-haired girl sat beside him; her hands clasped, and her looks directed to the little mound-her feet, her arms, and her head, were bare; and a flat hat of plaited straw, bound with green ribbon, which lay at her feet, seemed all the charms of dress which this Derbyshire maiden had called in to the aid of a form full of

beauty, and swelling into woman hood. They sat silent for a little space, and then I heard the old man say, "Anna, my love-the stream runs fair and pure-the grass grows green and long-and the flowers which grow on that grave are as ripe and as full blown as they were when, sixty years ago, I nursed them, and watered them, and bade them flourish. Man has spared this hallowed nook cattle have not profaned Eyam Dell by browzing on the sod where I have dropt many a tear-even the little birds build not their nests in the bushes; but, with a slow wing and a softened song, seem to lament with me. To thee, my love, it may seem strange, that thin hairs, and a frame which a few years must soon take to the grave, should seek to recal the joys and the pas sions of youth, and that the bosom of eighty should still throb like that of seventeen. But as my love was not like the love of other men, neither did I love her as other men do-I lost her not by my own folly, or the folly of others-by the fickleness of woman's heart, nor by the falsehood of friends-nor did death take her away as other maidens have been taken, fading slowly by day, and withering slowly by night, like a flower on its stalk: I left her at even, lovely and laughing among the maidens of Eyam, and next even I

found her silent and lifeless as that flower is which thou holdest in thy hand; the breath of heaven had passed from between her lips; and her kindred had perished with her for the angel of the Lord passed through Eyam, and smote of her sons and of her daughters two hundred and forty and seven."

"Grandfather," said the maiden, gazing in the old man's face, with a look which wished to wile him from his mood, "shall I sing one of the mournful old ballads which you love, and which I so often sing when me lancholy thoughts are with you?" "Sing, child, I pray thee," said the old man; "there is devotion in a mournful song-it takes man's mind away from the vanities of the world, and presents to his eye pathetic images which lift his thoughts a bove: sing, I pray thee; and let thy song be thy mother's ballad of Eyam Banks-a thousand times have her lips chaunted it to me--and thy voice, Anna, is like thy mother's." sweet, a low, and an artless way, the girl sang her mother's song: the old man placed his face between the palms of his hands, and I heard him sob as the verses paused-and the raven, which still retained its station on the cliff, looked more earnestly down; for the song spoke more of the dead than of the living.

In a

at each glance, a fold of her mantle, or a displaced ribbon-and, with that regard for personal appearance which I never wish a woman to be too devout to forget, she prepared for the coming of the merry people of Eyam.

To a sound such as the maiden had heard, I now turned my attention-it was yet remote, and the beauty of the morning made me forget all else for a time. The sun had now risen; and hill, and rock, and stream, acknowledged his presence with a glow nearly rivalling the deep blue splendour of heaven, flushed all over with a flickered radiance, which kept gushing in long quivering streams from the visible fountain of light. The cattle rose from the grass, and shook the morning dew from their sides; the shepherd's dog barked loudly for joy, ran round and round the sunny knoll tops, and made many a circle, of which its master was the centre; while the farm-house cock, as he led out his train to the stubble field, stopt ever as he went, and, with a hearty cottage-rousing crow, sought rather to tell the world that he, in all his majesty of spurs and doublecomb, was gone abroad, than to summon man to the reaphook and scythe. On a morning such as this, with the air still, and fragrant with clover-balm, and rural sounds of a pleasant sort awakening on every side, it seemed much less difficult to be blithe than sad: a man can hardly look God's sun in the face and be sorrowful-and, doubtless in conformity to the laughing look of the eastern sky, the people came forth to hold holiday among their romantic dells.

I love the jovial and enjoying dispositions of the good people of old England, who interpret every thing in favour of mirth and good fellowship: the martyrdom of a saint-the commencement of war-coming crying into the world, or going cold out of it-the bridal or the burial-all are alike harbingers of joy, and come with healing on their wings-come to be embalmed in the smoke of the feast, and to reel amid the purple glories of the vintage. "Better come at the back of a burial than the beginning of a bridal," says the

pithy proverb, which points out the times of good cheer-and I am far from being partial to self-mortification and penance. I love an event which throws the shadow of mirth and good living before it: a worship which casts down the venerable gods of the wine-press and the larder, is not for me-I am a lover of superstitious meats and drinks, and I care not who knows it. Now this happened to be the morning of a day memorable in the calendar of calamities-the period when the plague broke in among the good people of Eyam; but the lapse of time-the death of almost all who had survived it-the natural wish of man to be merry-and the agreeable sense in which a holiday is ever accepted by the multitude of the rich as well as the ragged-let loose, upon hill and vale, many of those buoyant and vagrant spirits who can pick an hour of pleasure out of any event.

The sound of their approach, which a little woody glen or dingle had partly subdued for a time, now increased more and more-a general hum, like the sound of bees swarming, first became audible—then laughter, faint at first, but swelling out, and augmenting more and more, succeeded--and finally a female squeal, uttered in the fulness of joy, told me that the plague of Eyam had provided enjoyments of many kinds for the descendants of those it had spared, equal to any of the most gracious saint of the calendar. I. stood on a little knoll, to see from whom this merriment came. Along the side of the dell, where the green sward joined the moorland, stood many upright grave-stonesnot in rank succeeding rank, like the memorials in a well-marshalled churchyard, but scattered about at random-marking out the places where the victims of the pest were buried. Here some of the youths and maidens of the district had assembled; and having first, as if in mockery of the old sorrowful rite, showered the graves with flowers and garlands, they began to chase each other with many a laugh, and shriek, and halloo among the tombs, till the dell and its rocks remurmured with the din. Some of the more staid and sedate seated them

selves on the grass along the brow of the dell, at a little distance from the graves-and their numbers were increased, first, by maidens who retired to breathe and bind up their disordered hair; and then by youths, who followed to seat themselves by their side, and have some private converse with them on the grass.

Some of the motives for this singular festivity I learned from the chance conversation of the peasants, who, collecting into several groupes, spread cloths on the grass, and, heaping them high with breakfast dainties, began, with clasp knives and sharp teeth, to attack whole hills of bread and beef, and make them subside before them. "Come, lay about you, neighbour," said a rustic, making his own knife, as he spoke, go in rapid circles round the thighbone of a sheep-while his left hand carried an incessant supply of bread and mutton to his mouth, in the manner of a man feeding a threshing mill; "Come, neighbour Brummel, carve and cram's the word. The new enclosure act will make this the last holiday we shall ever hold among Riley grave-stones-the corn will be cheap when churchyards are tilled by act of parliament:" and he applied the bone to his mouth, and kept turning it with both hands, making a seam of long sharp teeth revolve round, and almost penetrate the solid bone. "I'll tell ye what, Emanuel," said Brummel, laying an empty ale-bottle a side, and removing a handful of foam from his lips; "I'll tell ye what-the churchyard worm is the fat worm-and the churchyard tree is the tall tree; and long and beautiful will the corn-swathe grow above the graves-and handsome will it look, and do more for man's body than a whole kingdom of gravestones. It's a kind act of parliament that redeems food from the deep and the hungry grave. And, now I think on't, I will pave my barn-floor with these barren memorials, and lay the lettered side up, that my threshers may have a lesson. I am well known as an encourager of learning in the parish:"-and taking up another bottle, and laying himself back, he caused its contents to de

scend gently into his mouth-enjoying his favourite beverage drop by drop. "Wisely spoken, neighbour Emanuel," said a third rustic; "though I'm not sure but I shall raise some small sort of claim myself to one or two of these dainty bits of hewn stone-and my hall door and hearth are as likely to be listened to as your barn floor; for my cousin of Gripeagain is one of the commissioners. What, man! shall nobody follow behind the parlia mentary plough, and pick up pavingstones, but yourself?" " Plague spot thee from the crown of the head to the buckle in thy shoe for a sordid knave, Job Giles," said a peasant beside him, interrupting his speech by a long draught of ale:-" plague spot thee, say I: may I be doomed to dig deeper for lead than Eldenhole, and tickle the soles of the antipodes before I reach it, if ye don't deserve to be turned into one of the links of our bucket chain, and go up and down the bowels of the earth now and for evermore, amen.What! would ye cast down Riley grave-stones, and pass the plough over your mother's breast-bone; and reap the corn, and eat of the bread, that was nourished out of her dust? May the plough that disturbs these graves plough up the sleeping plague too: it will be busy on earth when I am deep below. The plague will be a plague of small taste that pursues a poor miner three hundred fathom down, while there are so many corpulent gentlemen in the county."

A young woman sat apart, with a little boy on her knee, looking at the grave-stones. "And are the stones to be broken, and the field of death to be ploughed?" she said: "I have heard my mother say that the priest of Eyam, when he laid the last victim of the pest in the grave, exclaimed, Behold the last whom the Lord will claim, and in his grave I bury the plague for a season: but whoso disturbs death's charnel-house

whoso goes down into the dwelling of dust-assuredly he shall be stricken through as with a sword, and the pest shall be loosed again on Eyam, and all her sons and daughters shall be devoured." "It is all truth ye speak, Alice," said one of her female companions; "for often