this particular one will repay the fanatic act as well perhaps as any; for although he has little north-east view, being shut in in that direction by Scawfell, Bowfell, Great End, Great Gable, and eastern Skiddaw, all higher than himself, his sea-view is very surprising. The hills of Wales are visible, and Snowdon among them. But which is Snowdon? you had better get a guide without a conscience, and not this little book, to inform you. The Isle of Man is clear enough in good weather, and so is the Solway Frith; and all the islands (nameless to the stranger) that haunt this coast half out of and half under water, according to the tides, sands that will be sea in a few hours, and sea that will be sands. The same sort of person who likes to get up this enormous hill would, we should think, very likely think it great fun to explore the copper-mine inside it. It was worked, they say, by the same old Romans who have done such very strange things in this locality. It is more than 700 feetbut upon consideration, it seems to us that we never undertook to guide people underneath the Lake District as well as over it. There is the usual amount of bad air, candle grease, vertigo, loss of presence of mind, hideous explosion, and satisfaction at getting out of it, all to be found in it, as in all other mines. If you do go, at least pay the miner who goes with you liberally, and pity him and his fellows from your heart, and thank heaven that you get your living in the sun and upon the earth's surface. There are also along the route we are about to traverse some slate-quarries exceedingly interesting, but which we do not consider it

comes within the province of this little book to describe. And now, once more, for Yewdale! We wind round by the Old Man's feet, with Yewdale beck seen through its leafy screen by our side, and are very soon put out of all doubt as to the cause of the valley's name. Before us is a farm-house, embellished, but scarcely adorned, by an infinite number of clipped yews, whose quaintness almost excuses their presence in so fair a place. Do not cross the bridge close by,-although that road also is worth seeing, and leads over Oxenfell to Skelwith and so home by a nearer way than ours. Keep under Raven Crag instead, and you will soon find yourself in the vale or rather pass of Tilberthwaite. "We have all our exits and our entrances," says our national poet, but we are sure that he would have made an exception, (had he been acquainted with it) of this particular spot. If we look back, we see no way by which we came in: if forward, no way by which we can get out. It is a cul-de-sac at both ends, if such an expression does not savour more of Ireland than France. The little scene is charmingly wooded and undulating, and the mighty crags on either side hem it in with a jealous care. Upon the left hand, high up the mountain, are the miners' huts; and below, upon every side, there lie heaps of the slate-treasure of Wetherlamb. Suddenly-and more to our surprise than pleasure, for we are sorry to leave so fair a scenewe come upon Little Langdale, only separated from us by a broad but shallow beck, which also divides Lancashire from Westmorland. And now through the pleasant lanes of the valley with which we are familiar,

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and round under the southern extremity of Lingmoor to Elterwater; over the Elter (soon to be the Brathay) with its slaty bed of glacier-like formation and up the hill to the right, which leads us into the road from High Close, (Excursion I.) and to Ambleside.

The tourist may either approach this venerable ruin by taking the steamer down the lake to Newby Bridge, and the road thence to Ulverston; or, by going to Coniston, as in the last excursion, and on to Furness by railway. This last will of course be the shorter and more convenient route from Ambleside. There is nothing worthy of much observation upon this route by train, after we have passed through the scenery already described, until a solemn hill to seaward looms in sight, called Black Combe, from which, says Wordsworth, there is a more extensive view than from any other spot in Britain. Scotland and Ireland are said to be both seen from it; and the summit is only half-a-dozen of miles from Broughton village, by which our train will pass. Beyond this place the road becomes unpicturesque indeed, though far from uninteresting. On the eastern side are dotted diminutive stations, with the few persons waiting at them mostly of a violent red colour, attributable to their working in the vast iron mines thereabouts; on the western side stretches the vast estuary of the Duddon, with the "cruel crawling foam" encroaching in silence upon the level sands, or unwillingly leaving them for a little, and suffering the sedgy flats to appear. Pre

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sently, and when we are not in the least expecting it, we are set down within a few yards of the high altar of Furness Abbey. This splendid ruin is situated in an out-of-the-way valley-through which however the demon Steam has long burrowed his waysurnamed from a plant that grows in it abundantly, (and by no means for any worse reason, since the place is singularly beautiful and healthy,) the Valley of Nightshade. The walls are of the deep red sandstone, whose colour certainly imparts a peculiar splendour to this lofty and extensive ruin. As we leave the hotel-which was an ancient manor house, and is built upon the site of the abbot's residence-we step out upon the lawn before the northern front of the pile. The great choir and nave lie open to our gaze, where many a time the long procession must have passed of white robed monks with cowl and cassock, rochet and scapulary; we see through the pointed windowless frames upon our left, the splendid carven canopies of the sedilia, where abbot after abbot in the far-back times must have sat and listened to the awful De Profundis chanted by a hundred voices. Turning the corner of the ruin, we come opposite the huge east window, where no longer the gorgeous panes throw down cold azure or warm gules," from Christ on cross, the Virgin and the beloved Disciples, and from the angel receiving the blood that flows from the five wounds, upon the high altar; [we know that they once did so, for much of the painted glass is still preserved in Bowness church on Windermere]. Let us picture to ourselves one of the superiors of this glorious

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place, close to us where we are standing, looking indeed straight towards us, as he performs high mass, and turns his back on that broad vista filled with old-world worshippers, which we now perceive empty and desolate, with the moonbeams chequering its grass-grown floor. We see above us, here, two corbel-heads in excellent preservation, the one of Stephen, founder of the abbey, and the other of Matilda, his queen. Sacristy, chapel, chapter-house, refectory, dormitory, guest-hall, all in their order, are passed by, with a glance a-piece in at their ruined casements, or over their dismantled walls. We scarcely perhaps can even guess for what use each chamber was designed, but the voice of the little beck, which runs by them now (save for much fallen rubbish) as clearly as centuries ago, mixes strangely with our thoughts, and seems to tell us much that is not to be told in guide-books or by guides. Nevertheless, as we make inspection of the interior, it may be well to know that the inside length of the church from east to west is 275 feet, and the outside length 303 feet; making the aggregate thickness of the east end and west end walls, with their buttresses, no less than eight and twenty feet. The inside of the chapter-house, is sixty feet by forty-five feet; and the extreme length of the building from north to south is about 600 feet. The style of the original building, began in 1127, was of course Norman, but almost every kind of architecture may be detected in a building which has undergone such reparations and alterations as Furness. The choir was probably first built (since the order, which was Cistercian, was especially devoted to melody) and the