A JOURNEY, &c. (continued 2)

After resting here, five hours, we returned to our little bark, with the spirits inspired by favourable weather, and were soon borne away on the ample current of the Rhine.

Large Dutch vessels, bound to Cologne, now frequently appeared, and refreshed us once again with the shew of neatness, industry and prosperity. The boatmen learned, that several of these were from Rotterdam, laden with the effects of Flemish refugees, brought thither from Ostend; and others were carrying military stores for the use, as they said, of the Emperor. The ordinary trade of the Dutch with Germany, in tea, coffee, English cloths and English hardware, which we had heard at Mentz was slackened by the expected approach of armies, now seemed to be exchanged for the conveyance of property from scenes of actual distress to those not likely to be long exempted from it.

A little beyond Urdingen, the town of Bodberg marks the northern extremity of the long and narrow dominions of Cologne, once so far connected with Holland, as that the Archbishop had jurisdiction over the Bishop of Holland, and the Chapter of Utrecht. But Philip the Second, before the States had resisted his plundering, obtained of the Pope, that they should not be subject to any foreign see; and the Bishop had a residence assigned to him at Haerlem.

The Rhine is now bounded on the left by the country of Meurs; and, having, after a few miles, part of the Duchy of Cleves on the right, it becomes thus enclosed by the territories of the King of Prussia, under whose dominion it rolls, till the States of Guelderland repose upon one bank, and, soon after, those of Utrecht, on the other. We were here, of course, in the country of tolls; and our waterman could not promise how far we should proceed in the day, since it was impossible to estimate the delays of the collectors. Meurs has no place, except small villages, near the river; but, at the commencement of the Duchy of Cleves, the influx of the Ruhr into the Rhine makes a small port, at which all vessels are obliged to stop, and pay for a Prussian pass. Some Dutch barks, of probably one hundred and twenty tons burthen, we were assured would not be dismissed for less than fifty ducats, or twenty guineas each. The town is called the Ruhort, and we had abundance of time to view it, for the Collector would not come to the boat, but ordered that we should walk up, and make our appearance before him.

It is a small place, rendered busy by a dock-yard for building vessels to be employed on the Rhine, and has somewhat of the fresh appearance, exhibited by such towns as seem to be built for present use, rather than to subsist because they have once been erected. In the dock, which opens to the Ruhr, two vessels of about sixty tons each were nearly finished, and with more capital, many might no doubt be built for the Dutch, timber and labour being here much cheaper than in Holland.

After the boatman had satisfied the Collector, we resumed our voyage, very well contented to have been detained only an hour. The woody heights of Cleves now broke the flat monotony of the eastern shore, the antiquity of whose forests is commemorated by Tacitus in the name of Saltus Teutoburgensis, supposed to have been bounded here by the town now called Duisbourg:

… … … "haud procul Teutoburgensi saltu, in quo reliquiæ Vari legionumque insepultæ dicebantur"—

These forests were also celebrated for their herds of wild horses; and the town of Duisbourg, having been rendered an University in 1655, is thus panegyrized by a German poet:

Of the commerce there were still some signs in half a dozen vessels, collected on the beach. Whether the University also subsists, or is any thing more than a free school, which is frequently called an University in Germany, we did not learn.

WESEL.

After five or six small towns, or villages, more, the Rhine reaches the well known fortified town and state prison of Wesel; a place, not always unfavourable to freedom, for here Rapin, driven from the district now called La Vendée in France, by Louis the Fourteenth's persecution of Protestants, retired to write his History; recollecting, perhaps, that it had before sheltered refugees from the tyranny of the Duke of Alva, and our sanguinary Mary.

The towers and citadel of Wesel give it the appearance of a military place, and it is frequently so mentioned; but the truth is, that the late King of Prussia, with the same fear of his subjects, which was felt by Joseph the Second in Flanders, demolished all the effectual works, except those of the citadel; a policy not very injurious to the Monarch in this instance, but which, in Flanders, has submitted the country to be twice over-run in three years, and has in fact been the most decisive of passed events in their influence upon present circumstances.

The reformed worship is exercised in the two principal churches, but the Catholics have two or three monasteries, and there is a Chapter of Noble Ladies, of whom two thirds are Protestants, and one third Catholic; an arrangement which probably accounts for their having no settled and common residence.

Opposite to Wesel is Burick, the fortifications of which remain, and are probably intended to serve instead of the demolished works of the former place, being connected with it by a flying-bridge over the Rhine. A little lower are the remains of the old chateau of Furstemberg, on a hill where the ladies of the noble Cistercian nunnery of Furstemberg had once a delightful seat, now deserted for the society of Xanten.

Xanten, the first place at which we had stopped in Germany, and the last, for a long tract, which we had seen with pleasure, Xanten, now distinguishable, at a small distance from the river, by its spires, reminded us of the gay hopes we had formed on leaving it; with a new world spread out before us, for curiosity, and, as we thought, for admiration; yet did not render the remembrance of disappointment, as to the last respect, painful, for even the little information we had gained seemed to be worth the labour of acquiring it.

The exchange of indefinite for exact ideas is for ever desirable. Without this journey of eleven or twelve hundred miles we should have considered Germany, as its position in maps and description in books represent it, to be important, powerful and prosperous; or, even if it had been called wretched, the idea would have been indistinct, and the assertion, perhaps, not wholly credited. The greatest and, as it is reasonable to believe, the best part of Germany we have now seen, and, in whatever train of reasoning it is noticed, have an opinion how it should be valued. Those, who cannot guess at causes, may be sure of effects; and having seen, that there is little individual prosperity in Germany, little diffusion of intelligence, manners, or even of the means for comfort, few sources of independence, or honourable wealth, and no examples of the poverty, in which there may be pride, it was not less perceptible, that there can be no general importance, no weight in the balance of useful, that is, peaceful power, and no place, but that of an instrument, even in the desperate exercises of politics.

A respect for the persons of learning, or thought, who live, as the impertinence of high and the ignorance of low society forces them to live, in a strict and fastidious retirement, cannot alter the general estimation of the country, in any respect here considered; their conversation with each other has no influence upon the community; their works cannot have a present, though they will have a general and a permanent effect. The humbler classes, from whom prosperity should result in peace, and strength in war, give little of either to Germany; and man is very seldom negatively stationed; when not useful to his fellow-creatures, he is generally somewhat injurious. The substantial debasement of the German peasantry, that is, their want of ordinary intelligence, re-acts upon the means that produced it, and, continuing their inferiority, continues many injurious effects upon the rest of Europe.

That Germany should be thus essentially humble, perhaps, none would have ventured to foresee. The materialist could not have found it in the climate. The politician might hastily expect it from the arbitrary character of the governments, but must hesitate, when he recollects how France advanced in science and manufactures, under the dominion of Louis the Fourteenth, greatly more despotic than the usual administrations in Germany. Perhaps, the only solution for this difference of effects from apparently similar causes is, that the greater extent of his territory, as well as the better opportunities of his subjects for commerce, enabled Louis to gratify his taste for splendour, at the same time that they shewed his ambition a means of indulgence, by increasing the means of his people. Germany, frittered into several score of sovereignties, has no opulent power; no considerable income, remaining after the payment of its armies; few wealthy individuals. The Emperor, with fifty-six titles, does not gain a florin by his chief dignity; or Granvelle, the Minister of Charles the Fifth, would have been contradicted when he said so in the Chamber of Princes. The Elector Palatine is almost the only Prince, whose revenue is not absorbed by political, military and household establishments; and though, in an advanced state of society, or in opulent nations, what is called patronage is seldom necessary, and must, perhaps, be as injurious to the happiness as it is to the dignity of those who receive it, nothing is more certain than that there have been periods in the history of all countries, when the liberality of the Prince, or the more independent protection of beneficed institutions, was necessary to the existence of curiosity and knowledge. At such times, a large expenditure, if directed by taste, or even by vanity, afforded a slow recompense for the aggressions, that might support it, by spreading a desire of distinction for some intellectual accomplishment, as the claim to notice from the court; and the improvement of mind circulated, by more general encouragement, till every town and village had its men of science. Thus it was that the despotism of Louis the Fourteenth had a different effect from that of his contemporary German Princes, who, by no oppressions, could raise a sufficient income, to make their own expenditure the involuntary means of improving the intellectual condition of their people.

From the neighbourhood of Xanten, in which we were induced thus to estimate what had been gained, since we saw it last, and from a shore that gradually rises into the many woody heights around Calcar and Cleves, the Rhine speedily reaches Rees, a town on the right bank, built advantageously at an angle, made by a flexure of the river to the left.

We landed to view this place, and were soon persuaded, by the Dutch-like cleanliness and civility of the people at the inn, to remain there for the night, rather than to attempt reaching Emmerick.

Rees is near enough to Holland to have some of its advantages; and, whatever contempt it may be natural for English travellers, at the commencement of their tour, to feel for Dutch dullness and covetousness, nothing but some experience of Germany is necessary to make them rejoice in a return to the neatness, the civility, the comforts, quietness, and even the good humour and intelligence to be easily found in Holland. Such, at least, was the change, produced in our minds by a journey from Nimeguen to Friburg. The lower classes of the Dutch, and it is the conduct of such classes, that every where has the chief influence upon the comforts of others, are not only without the malignant sullenness of the Germans, and, therefore, ready to return you services for money, but are also much superior to them in intelligence and docility. Frequent opportunities of gain, and the habit of comparing them, sharpen intellects, which might otherwise never be exercised. In a commercial country, the humblest persons have opportunities of profiting by their qualifications; they are, therefore, in some degree, prepared for better conditions, and do not feel that angry envy of others, which arises from the consciousness of some irremediable distinction.

The inhabitants of Rees speak both Dutch and German; and it was pleasing to hear at the inn the sulky yaw of the latter exchanged for the civil Yaw well, Mynheer, of the Dutch. The town is built chiefly of brick, like those in Holland; the streets light; the market-place spacious, and the houses well preserved. It is of no great extent, but the space within the walls is filled, though this must have been sometimes partly cleared by the sieges, to which Rees was subject in the war of Philip the Second upon the Dutch. A few emigrants from Brussels and Maestricht were now sheltered in it; but there was no garrison and no other symptom of its neighbourhood to the scenes of hostilities, than the arrival of a Prussian commissary to collect hay and corn. We were cheered by the re-appearance of prosperity in a country, where it is so seldom to be seen, and passed a better evening in this little town, than in any other between Friburg and Holland.

In the morning, having no disgust to impel us, we were somewhat tardy in embarking; and the boatmen, who had found out the way of reviving our impatience, talked of the great distance of Holland, till they had us on board. Five or six well-looking villages presently appear after leaving Rees, the next port to which is Emmerick, once an Hanseatic town, and still a place of some dignity, from spires and towers, but certainly not of much commerce, for we could not see more than two vessels on the beach.

This is the town, at which a Governor and General, appointed by Philip the Second, with probably half a dozen titles, asserting his excellence, serenity and honour, gave an instance of baseness, scarcely ever exceeded even by Philip himself. Approaching the place, which was then neutral, the inhabitants went out to him with an entreaty, that he would not send troops into it, and, probably by something more than entreaty, obtained his promise, that they should be spared. In spite of this promise, of the remonstrances of the inhabitants, and of the representations of a clergyman, that the Spanish assurances of having engaged in the war chiefly for the interests of the Catholic religion could not be credited, if acts, contrary to the precepts of all religion, were daily perpetrated; in spite of these, Mendoza, the Spanish commander, sent in four hundred troops, but with another promise, that their number should not be increased, and with this consolation for the burgesses, that the Spanish Colonel of the detachment was directed to swear in their presence, to admit no more, even if they should be offered to him.

Mendoza had estimated this man's heart by his own, and considered his oath only as a convenient delusion for preventing the resistance of the inhabitants. He accordingly sent other troops to him, under the command of a foreign hireling, and with a peremptory order for their admission; but the honest Spaniard gave him this reply, "Though the General has set the example, I will not violate my faith."

Passing Emmerick with much pleasure, we speedily came to the point at which the Rhine, dividing itself into two streams, loses its name immediately in the one, and presently after in the other. Some writer has compared this merging to the voluntary surrender of exertions and views, by which affectionate parents lose themselves in their children. The stream, which bends to the west, takes the name of the Waal; that, which flows in the general direction of the river, retains its name, for a few miles, when another stream issues to the northward, and takes that of the Yssel. The old river is still recognized, after this separation, and the town of Rhenen takes its name from it; but, about a mile lower, it yields to the denomination of the Leck, which, like that of the Waal, does not long enjoy its usurped distinction. The Waal, or Wahl, being joined by the Maas, as the Dutch, or the Meuse, as the French call it, near Bommel, takes the name of that river, and, soon after, the Leck merges in their united stream, which carries the title of the Maas by Rotterdam, Schiedam and Flaarding, into the German ocean.

We did not yield to this artificial distinction, so far as to think ourselves taking leave of the Rhine, or losing the stream, that had presented to us, at first, features of the boldest grandeur, mingled with others of the sweetest beauty, and then borne us safely past a shore, pressed by the hasty steps of distress, as well as threatened by those of ravage from a flying and a pursuing army. Nor does the river change the character it has lately assumed; but still passes with an even, wide and forceful current between cultivated or pastoral levels, bounded, at some distance, by gradual, woody ascents.

Among these heights and woods, Cleves is visible to the left, and those, who see it only at this distance, may repeat the dictionary descriptions of its grandeur and consequence as a capital. Soon after, Schenckenkanze, a small fort, built on the point of the long island, round which the Rhine and the Waal flow, occurs; and then the southern extremity of the province of Utrecht. We were glad to see this commencement of the dominions of the United States, though the shore opposite to them was still Prussian; and, telling the boatmen, if they had occasion to stop at any town, to touch only upon the free bank, they humoured us so far as to row out of the current for the sake of approaching it; in short, we stepped no more upon German land; and, within a few miles, were enveloped, on both sides, by the prospering, abounding plains of the Dutch provinces. Italiam! Italiam!

Early in the afternoon, the lofty tower of the Belvidere, or prospect-house at Nimeguen, came in sight; then the bright pinnacles of the public buildings, and the high, turf-coloured angles of the fortifications. The town was thronged with fugitives from Flanders, but we found sufficient accommodation, as before, at the inn in the market-place, and were not in a tone of spirits to be fastidious about any thing, heightened as the appearance of prosperity was to us by contrast, and happy as even the refugees appeared to be at finding peace and safety. The mall before the Prince of Orange's house was filled with parties of them, as gay as if they had left their homes in Flanders but for an holiday excursion.

We were at the Belvidere till evening, lingering over the rich prospect of probably forty miles diameter, from Arnheim and Duisbourg in the north to Cleves and Guelders in the south, with an eastern view over half the forests of Guelderland to those of Westphalia. Such an extent of green landscape, richly varied with towns, villages and woods, spreading and gradually ascending to the horizon, was now almost as novel to us, as it was placidly beautiful. On the east, the blue mountainous lines of Germany broke in upon the reposing character of the scene.

In the Waal below, two or three vessels bore the Emperor's flag, and were laden, as it was said, with some of his regalia from Flanders. Near them, several bilanders, the decks of which were covered with awnings, had attracted spectators to the opposite bank, for to that side only they were open; and the company in all were objects of curiosity to the Dutch, being no less than the sisterhood of several Flemish convents, in their proper dresses, and under the care of their respective abbesses. These ladies had been thus situated, for several days and nights, which they had passed on board their vessels. They were attended by their usual servants, and remained together, without going on shore, being in expectation, as we were told, of invitations to suitable residences in Germany; but it was then reported at Nimeguen, that Prince Cobourg was re-advancing to Brussels, and these societies had probably their misfortunes increased by the artifices of a political rumour. We could not learn, as we wished, that they had brought away many effects. Their plate it was needless to enquire about; the contributions of the preceding spring had no doubt swallowed up that. Having dismissed our Cologne watermen, we embarked upon the Waal, the next day, in a public boat for Rotterdam; a neat schuyt, well equipped and navigated, in which, for a few florins, you have the use of the cabin. Our voyage, from the want of wind, was slow enough to shew as much as could be seen of the Waal; which, at Nimeguen, runs almost constantly downward, but is soon met by the tide, and overcome, or, at least, resisted by it. The breadth, which varies but little above Bommel, is, to our recollection, not less than that of the Thames, at Fulham; the depth, during the beginning of the same space, is probably considerable, in the stream, for, even upon the shore, our dextrous old steersman found water enough to sweep the rushy bank at almost every tack, with a boat, drawing about five feet. The signs of activity in commerce are astonishing. A small hamlet, one cannot call any place in Holland contemptible, or miserable, a hamlet of a dozen houses has two or three vessels, of twenty tons each; a village has a herring boat for almost every house, and a trading vessel for Rotterdam two or three times a week. Heavy, high rigged vessels, scarcely breasting the stream, and fit only for river voyages, we frequently met; many of them carrying coals for the nearer part of Germany, such as we saw on the banks between Rees and Nimeguen, and, with much pleasure, recognized for symptoms of neighbourhood to England.

The first town from Nimeguen, on the right bank of the Waal, is Thiel, which we had only time to see was enclosed by modern fortifications, and was not inferior in neatness to other Dutch towns, at least not so in one good street, which we were able to traverse. A sand bank before the port has much lessened the trade of the place, which, in the tenth century, was considerable enough to be acknowledged by the Emperor Otto, in the grant of several privileges.

About a league lower, on the opposite side of the Waal, or rather on the small island of Voorn, stood formerly a fort, called Nassau, which the French, in 1672, utterly destroyed. Near its site, at the northern extremity of the island of Bommel, which lies between the Maas and the Waal, a fort, built by Cardinal Andrew of Austria, still subsists, under the name of Fort St. André. The founder, who built it upon the model of the citadel of Antwerp, had no other view than to command by it the town of Bommel; but, in the year 1600, Prince Maurice of Nassau reduced the garrison, after a siege of five weeks, and it has since contributed to protect what it was raised to destroy, the independence of the Dutch commonwealth.

In the evening, we came opposite to the town of Bommel, where we were put on shore to pass the night and the next day, being Sunday; the boat proceeded on the voyage for Rotterdam, but could not reach it before the next morning.

Bommel is a small town on the edge of the river, surrounded by wood enough to make it remarkable in Holland; light, neat and pretty. The two principal streets cross each other at right angles, and are without canals. Being at some distance from the general roads, it is ill provided with inns; but one of them has a delightful prospect, and there is no dirt, or other symptom of negligence within. The inhabitants are advanced enough in prosperity and intelligent curiosity to have two Sociétés, where they meet to read new publications; a luxury, which may be found in almost every Dutch town. At the ends of the two principal streets are gates; that towards the water between very old walls; those on the land side modern and stronger with drawbridges over a wide fosse, that nearly surrounds the town.

On the other side of this ditch are high and broad embankments, well planted with trees, and so suitable to be used as public walks, that we supposed them to have been raised partly for that purpose, and partly as defences to the country against water. They are, however, greater curiosities, having been thrown up by Prince Maurice in 1599, chiefly because his garrison of four thousand foot and two thousand horse were too numerous for the old works; and between these intrenchments was made what is thought to have been the first attempt at a covered way, since improved into a regular part of fortifications. This was during the ineffectual siege of three weeks, in which Mendoza lost two thousand men, Maurice having then a constant communication with the opposite bank of the Waal by means of two bridges of boats, one above, the other below the town.

Bommel was otherwise extremely important in the struggle of the Dutch against Philip. It was once planned to have been delivered by treachery, but, that being discovered, the Earl of Mansfeldt, Philip's commander, raised the siege. It adhered to the assembly at Dort, though the Earl of March, the commander of the first armed force of the Flemings, had committed such violences in the town, that the Prince of Orange found it necessary to send him to prison. In the campaign of 1606, when Prince Maurice adopted defensive operations, this was one of the extreme points of his line, which extended from hence to Schenck.

The natural honesty of mankind is on the side of the defensive party, and it is, therefore, that in reading accounts of sieges one is always on the side of the besieged. The Dutch, except when subject to some extraordinary influence, have been always defensive in their wars; from their first astonishing resistance to Philip, to that against the petty attack, which Charles the Second incited the Bishop of Munster to make, who had the coolness to tell Sir William Temple, that he had thought over the probabilities of his enterprise, and, if it failed, he should not care, for he could go into Italy and buy a Cardinal's cap; but that he had first a mind to make some figure in the world. The territory of the United Provinces is so small, that, in these wars, the whole Dutch Nation has been in little better condition, than that of a people, besieged in one great town; and Louis the Fourteenth, in the attempt, which Charles the Second's wicked sister concerted between the two Monarchs, sent, for the first time, to a whole people, a threat, similar to those sometimes used against a single town. His declaration of the 24th of June, 1672, after boasting how his "just designs" and undertakings had prospered, since his arrival in the army, and how he would treat the Dutch, if, by submission, they would "deserve his great goodness," thus proceeds:

"On the contrary, all of whatever quality and condition, who shall refuse to comply with these offers, and shall resist his Majesty's forces, either by the inundation of their dyke, or otherwise, shall be punished with the utmost rigour. At present, all hostilities shall be used against those, who oppose his Majesty's designs; and, when the ice shall open a passage on all sides, his Majesty will not give any quarter to the inhabitants of such cities, but give order, that their goods be plundered and their houses burnt."

It is pleasant, in every country, to cherish the recollections, which make it a spectacle for the mind as well as the eye, and no country is enriched by so many as Holland, not even the West of England, where patriotism and gratitude hover in remembrance over the places, endeared by the steps of our glorious William.

Bommel is built on a broad projection of the island of the same name into the Waal, which thus flows nearly on two sides of its walls, and must be effectually commanded by them. But, though it is therefore important in a military view, and that the French were now so near to Breda, as to induce families to fly from thence, whom we saw at Bommel, yet the latter place was in no readiness for defence. There was not a cannon upon the walls, or upon the antient outworks, which we mistook for terraces, and not ten soldiers in the place; a negligence, which was, however, immediately after remedied.

The Dutch tardiness of exertion has been often blamed, and, in such instances, deservedly; but, as to the influence of this sparingness in their general system of politics and in former periods, a great deal more wit than truth has been circulated by politicians. The chief value of power is in the known possession of it. Those who are believed to have exerted it much, will be attacked, because the exertion may be supposed to have exhausted the power. The nation, or the individual, that attempts to rectify every error and punish every trivial offence of others, may soon lose, in worthless contests, the strength, that should be preserved for resisting the most positive and unequivocal attacks.

Ministers have appeared in Holland, who could plan unnecessary contests, and meditate the baseness, falsely called ambition, of putting the whole valour and wealth of a nation into exercise, for the purpose of enforcing whatever they may have once designed, or said; and, as there is, perhaps, no country in Europe, which cannot justly allege some injury against another, they have exaggerated the importance of such injuries, for the purpose of impelling their own country, by aggravated anger, or fear, into precipitate hostilities. But the Dutch, accustoming themselves to as much vigilance, as confidence, have with-held encouragement from such artifices, and hence that general tardiness in beginning wars, which every politician, capable of an inflammatory declamation, thinks it wisdom to ridicule.

We left Bommel at seven in the morning, in a stout, decked sea-boat, well rigged, and, as appeared, very dextrously navigated. The wind was directly contrary, and there are sometimes islands, sometimes shoals in the Waal, which narrowed the channel to four or five times the length of the vessel; yet there was not any failure in tacking, and the boom was frequently assisted to traverse by the reeds of the bank, which it swept. The company in the cabin were not very numerous, but there was amongst them at least one lamentable group; the minister of a Protestant church at Maestricht, an aged and decrepid gentleman, flying with his wife and two daughters from the approaching siege of that place; himself laid on pillows upon the floor of the cabin; his daughters attending him; all neglected, all victims to the glories of war.

The boat soon passed Louvenstein, on the left bank of the Maese, a brick castellated building apparently about two centuries old, surrounded by some modern works, which render it one of the defences of the river. Count Byland, the late commander of Breda, was then imprisoned in this fortress, which has been long used for state purposes. Here those friends of Barneveldt were confined, who derived from it, and left to their posterity the name of the Louvenstein party; and hence Grotius, who was of the number, made his escape, concealed in a trunk, which the sentinels had so often seen filled with Arminian books, that his wife persuaded them they carried nothing more than their usual cargo.

From Louvenstein, near which the Waal unites with the Maese, and assumes the name of that river, we soon reached Gorcum, where the short stay of the boat permitted us only to observe the neatness of the town, and that the fortifications had the appearance of being strong, though small, and seemed to be in most exact repair. This, indeed, is one of the forts chiefly relied upon by the province of Holland; for, in 1787, their States made Gorcum and Naarden the extreme points of their line of defence, and ordered a dyke to be thrown across the Linge, which flows into the Maese at the former place, for the purpose of overflowing the surrounding country.

The next town in the voyage is Dort, formerly one of the most considerable in Holland, and still eminent for its wealth, though the trade is diminished by that of Rotterdam. This is the town, which Dumourier strove to reach, in the invasion of 1792, and forty thousand stand of arms were found to have been collected there for him. Our boat passed before one quarter, in which the houses rise immediately over a broad bay of the Maese, with an air of uncommon gaiety and lightness; but the evenness of the town prevented us from seeing more than the part directly nearest.

In the bay was one of those huge timber floats, the construction of which has been before described. It was crowded with visitors from the town; and the wooden huts upon it, being ornamented with flags, had the appearance of booths at a fair. Large as this was, it had been considerably diminished, since its arrival at Dort, and several hundreds of the workmen had departed.

A little further on, and within sight of this joyous company, was the melancholy reverse of nearly an hundred ladies, driven from some convent in Flanders, now residing, like those near Nimeguen, in bilanders moored to the bank. Their vessels being open on the side towards the water, we caught as full a view of them as could be had without disrespect; and saw that they still wore their conventual dresses, and were seated, apparently according to their ages, at some sort of needle-work. It might have been censured, a few years since, that mistakes, or deceptions, as to religious duties, should have driven them from the world; but it was certainly now only to be lamented, that any thing short of the gradual and peaceful progress of reason should have expelled them from their retirement.

We reached Rotterdam, in the evening, and stayed there, the next day, to observe whether the confidence of the Dutch in their dykes and fortresses was sufficient to preserve their tranquillity in a place almost within hearing of the war, the French being then besieging Sluys. There was no perceptible symptom of agitation, or any diminution of the ordinary means for increasing wealth. The persons, with whom we conversed, and they were not a few, spoke of the transactions of the campaign with almost as much calmness and curiosity, as if these had been passing in India. They could not suppose it possible, that the French might reach the city; or, if they did, seemed to rely upon the facility, with which their property could be removed by the canals through Leyden and Haerlem, to the shore of the Zuyder Zee, then across it by sailing barges, and then again by the canals as far as Groningen, whither the French would certainly not penetrate. So valuable was water thought in Holland, not only as a means of opulence in peace, but of defence, or preservative flight in war. An excessive selfishness, which is the vice of the Dutch, appeared sometimes to prevent those, who could fly, from thinking of their remaining countrymen.

An intention of dispensing with the customary fair was the only circumstance, which distinguished this season from others at Rotterdam, and that was imputed to the prudence of preventing any very numerous meetings of the populace.

About three weeks sooner than was necessary, for it was so long before a convenient passage occurred, we went from hence to Helvoetsluys, and there remained, a fortnight, watching an inflexible north-westerly wind, and listening to accounts but too truly certified of French frigates and privateers, almost unopposed in those latitudes. Lloyd's List brought the names of five, or seven, French ships, then known to be cruising in the north; and one packet was delayed in its voyage by the sight of several Dutch vessels, set on fire within a few leagues of Goree. The Dutch lamented, that the want of seamen crippled the operations of their Admiralty Board: an Englishman, who was proud to deny, that any such want, or want in such a degree, existed, as to his country, was reduced to silence and shame, when it was enquired: Why, then, have these seas been, for twelve months, thus exposed to the dominion of the French?

At length, a convoy arrived for a noble family, and we endeavoured to take the benefit of it by embarking in a packet, which sailed at the same time; but the sloop of war was unable to pass over what are called the Flats, and our captain had resolved to proceed without it, notwithstanding the contrarieties of the wind; when, with much joy, we discerned a small boat, and knew it to be English by the skilful impetuosity of the rowers. Having induced the people of the packet to make a signal, by paying them for the passage to Harwich, we were fortunately taken on board this boat, at the distance of about three leagues from Helvoetsluys, and soon re-landed at that place; the packet proceeding on her voyage, which, supposing no interruption from the French vessels, was not likely to be made in less than three days. We rejoiced at the release from fatigue and from fear, at least, if not from danger; and, seeing little probability of an immediate passage, returned, the next day, to Rotterdam, with the hope of finding some neutral vessel, bound to an English port.

We were immediately gratified by the promise of an American captain to meet us with his vessel at Helvoetsluys, and, the next day, had a delightful voyage thither, in a hired yacht, partly by the Maese, and partly by channels inaccessible to large vessels.

FLAARDING.

The Maese presently brought us opposite to this small port, the metropolis of the herring fishers; rendered interesting by the patient industry and useful courage of its inhabitants. We landed at it, but saw only what was immediately open for observation. Like most of the Dutch towns, on the banks of rivers, it is protected from floods by standing at the distance of three or four hundred yards from the shore, and communicates with the stream only by a narrow, but deep canal. The best street is built upon the quays of this channel, on which the herring boats deposit their cargoes before the doors of the owners. We did not see more than fifty, a great number being then at sea. Except the business in this street, and the smell of herrings, which prevailed every where, there was nothing to shew that we were in a place supported solely by the industry of fishermen; no neglected houses, no cottages, no dirty streets, no inferiority, in point of neatness and brightness, to the other towns of Holland.

The inhabitants are remarkable for adhering to the dress, as well as the employments of their ancestors; so much so, that their clothing is mentioned in other towns as the representation of the antient national dress, common throughout all the provinces two centuries since; and it is certain, that their appearance is exactly such as is delineated in pictures of that date.

Some miles further, we entered the old Maese, a channel in several parts very narrow, and evidently preserved by art, but in others nobly expansive, and filled almost to the level of the luxuriant pastures and groves that border it. In one part, where the antient stream takes a circuitous course, a canal has been cut, that shortens the voyage, for light vessels, by several miles, and barks in one channel are sometimes visible from the other, their sails swelling over fields, in which, at a distance, no water is discernible. Neat and substantial farmhouses, with meadows flaming from them to the river, frequently occurred; and there were more appearances of the careful labours, peculiar to the Dutch, than in the great Maese itself, the banks being occasionally supported, like their dykes, by a compact basket-work of flags and faggots.

Passing many small villages, or hamlets, we came, at sun-set, to the large branch of the sea, which spreads from Williamstadt to Helvoetsluys, and from thence to the German ocean. The former fortress was faintly visible at a great distance over the water; and, while we were straining our sight towards it, there was proof enough of a nearness to the present theatre of war, the sounds of the siege of Sluys coming loudly and distinctly in the breeze. The characters of evening had fallen upon the scene in mild and deep solemnity; but the glories of nature were unfelt, while a dreadful estimation of the miseries, produced at each return of the sullen roar, pressed almost exclusively upon the mind; considerations, which were soon after prolonged by the melancholy view of several English transports, filled with wounded soldiers, whose blythe music, now at the firing of the evening gun, was rendered painful by its contrast to the truth of their conditions.

At Helvoetsluys, nothing was to be heard, but accounts, derived from many respectable officers, on their way to England, of the unexampled difficulties borne, cheerfully borne, by the British army, within the last three months, and deservedly mentioned, not as complaints, but as proofs of their firmness. There were, however, mingled with these, many reports as to the contrary conduct even of those continental troops, which still kept the field with us; of their tardiness, their irregularity, of the readiness with which they permitted the British to assume all the dangers of attacks, and of their little co-operation even in the means of general resistance. Brave Anglois! Brave Anglois! was the constant shout of these troops, when they had recourse to the British to regain the posts themselves had just lost, or to make some assault, which they had refused, or had attempted with ineffectual formality. They would then follow our troops, and, when an advantage was gained, seemed to think they had share enough of the victory, if they were at hand to continue the slaughter of the retreating, and to engross all the plunder of the dead.

We were as glad to escape from such considerations, as from the crowded inns of Helvoetsluys, now little more convenient than ships; and, the next morning, embarked on board the American vessel, then arrived from Rotterdam. A fair wind soon wafted us out of sight of the low coast of Holland; but we were afterwards becalmed, and carried by tides so far towards the Flemish shore as to have the firing before Sluys not only audible, but terribly loud. For part of three days, we remained within hearing of this noise; but did not, therefore, think ourselves very distant from the English coast, knowing that the fire, at the preceding siege of Nieuport, had been heard as far as the Downs; Nieuport, the wretched scene of so many massacres, and of distress, which, in Holland, had been forcibly described to us by eye-witnesses.

So keenly, indeed were the horrors of this place conceived by those, who personally escaped from them, that of the emigrants, rescued by the intrepidity of our seamen, many suppressed all joy at their own deliverance by lamentations for the fate of their brethren. One gentleman was no sooner on board a ship, then exposed to the batteries on shore, than he climbed the shrouds and remained aloft, notwithstanding all entreaties, till a severe wound obliged him to descend. Another, who had been saved from the beach by a young sailor, was unable to swim so far as the ship; and the honest lad, having taken him upon his back, struggled hard amidst a shower of balls to save both their lives. At length, he, too, began to falter; and the weakness of his efforts, not his complaints, seemed to shew his companion, that one, or both of them, must perish: the latter nobly asked the lad, whether he could save his own life, if left to himself; and, receiving a reluctant reply, that probably he might do so, but that he would strive for both, the emigrant instantly plunged into the ocean and was seen no more. The glorious sailor reached his ship, just as he began again to sail, and was saved.

The calm continued during the day, and the sun set with uncommon grandeur among clouds of purple, red and gold, that mingling with the serene azure of the upper sky, composed a richness and harmony of colouring which we never saw surpassed. It was most interesting to watch the progress of evening and its effect on the waters; streaks of light scattered among the dark western clouds, after the sun had set, and gleaming in long reflection on the sea, while a grey obscurity was drawing over the east, as the vapours rose gradually from the ocean. The air was breathless; the tall sails of the vessel were without motion, and her course upon the deep scarcely perceptible; while, above, the planet Jupiter burned with steady dignity, and threw a tremulous line of light on the sea, whose surface flowed in smooth waveless expanse. Then, other planets appeared, and countless stars spangled the dark waters. Twilight now pervaded air and ocean, but the west was still luminous, where one solemn gleam of dusky red edged the horizon, from under heavy vapours.

It was now that we first discovered some symptoms of England; the lighthouse on the South-Foreland appeared like a dawning star above the margin of the sea.

The vessel made little progress during the night. With the earliest dawn of morning we were on deck, in the hope of seeing the English coast; but the mists veiled it from our view. A spectacle, however, the most grand in nature, repaid us for our disappointment, and we found the circumstances of a sun-rise at sea, yet more interesting than those of a sun-set. The moon, bright and nearly at her meridian, shed a strong lustre on the ocean, and gleamed between the sails upon the deck; but the dawn, beginning to glimmer, contended with her light, and, soon touching the waters with a cold grey tint, discovered them spreading all round to the vast horizon. Not a sound broke upon the silence, except the lulling one occasioned by the course of the vessel through the waves, and now and then the drowsy song of the pilot, as he leaned on the helm; his shadowy figure just discerned, and that of a sailor pacing near the head of the ship with crossed arms and a rolling step. The captain, wrapt in a sea-coat, lay asleep on the deck, wearied with the early watch. As the dawn strengthened, it discovered white sails stealing along the distance, and the flight of some sea-fowls, as they uttered their slender cry, and then, dropping upon the waves, sat floating on the surface. Meanwhile, the light tints in the east began to change, and the skirts of a line of clouds below to assume a hue of tawny red, which gradually became rich orange and purple. We could now perceive a long tract of the coast of France, like a dark streak of vapour hovering in the south, and were somewhat alarmed on finding ourselves within view of the French shore, while that of England was still invisible.

The moon-light faded fast from the waters, and soon the long beams of the sun shot their lines upwards through the clouds and into the clear blue sky above, and all the sea below glowed with fiery reflections, for a considerable time, before his disk appeared. At length he rose from the waves, looking from under clouds of purple and gold; and as he seemed to touch the water, a distant vessel passed over his disk, like a dark speck.

We were soon after cheered by the faintly seen coast of England, but at the same time discovered, nearer to us on the south-west, the high blue headlands of Calais; and, more eastward, the town, with its large church and the steeples of two others, seated on the edge of the sea. The woods, that fringe the summits of hills rising over it, were easily distinguished with glasses, as well as the national flag on the steeple of the great church. As we proceeded, Calais cliffs, at a considerable distance westward of the town, lost their aërial blue, and shewed an high front of chalky precipice, overtopped by dark downs. Beyond, far to the south-west, and at the foot of a bold promontory, that swelled above all the neighbouring heights, our glasses gave us the towers and ramparts of Boulogne, sloping upward from the shore, with its tall lighthouse on a low point running out into the sea; the whole appearing with considerable dignity and picturesque effect. The hills beyond were tamer, and sunk gradually away in the horizon. At length, the breeze wafting us more to the north, we discriminated the bolder features of the English coast, and, about noon, found ourselves nearly in the middle of the channel, having Picardy on our left and Kent on the right, its white cliffs aspiring with great majesty over the flood. The sweeping bay of Dover, with all its chalky heights, soon after opened. The town appeared low on the shore within, and the castle, with round and massy towers, crowned the vast rock, which, advancing into the sea, formed the eastern point of the crescent, while Shakespeare's cliff, bolder still and sublime as the eternal name it bears, was the western promontory of the bay. The height and grandeur of this cliff were particularly striking, when a ship was seen sailing at its base, diminished by comparison to an inch. From hence the cliffs towards Folkstone, though still broken and majestic, gradually decline. There are, perhaps, few prospects of sea and shore more animated and magnificent than this. The vast expanse of water, the character of the cliffs, that guard the coast, the ships of war and various merchantmen moored in the Downs, the lighter vessels skimming along the channel, and the now distant shore of France, with Calais glimmering faintly, and hinting of different modes of life and a new world, all these circumstances formed a scene of pre-eminent combination, and led to interesting reflection.

Our vessel was bound to Deal, and, leaving Dover and its cliffs on the south, we entered that noble bay, which the rich shores of Kent open for the sea. Gentle hills, swelling all round from the water, green with woods, or cultivation, and speckled with towns and villages, with now and then the towers of an old fortress, offered a landscape particularly cheering to eyes accustomed to the monotonous flatness of Dutch views. And we landed in England under impressions of delight more varied and strong than can be conceived, without referring to the joy of an escape from districts where there was scarcely an home for the natives, and to the love of our own country, greatly enhanced by all that had been seen of others.

Between Deal and London, after being first struck by the superior appearance and manners of the people to those of the countries we had been lately accustomed to, a contrast too obvious as well as too often remarked to be again insisted upon, but which made all the ordinary circumstances of the journey seem new and delightful, the difference between the landscapes of England and Germany occurred forcibly to notice. The large scale, in which every division of land appeared in Germany, the long corn grounds, the huge stretches of hills, the vast plains and the wide vallies could not but be beautifully opposed by the varieties and undulations of English surface, with gently swelling slopes, rich in verdure, thick enclosures, woods, bowery hop-grounds, sheltered mansions, announcing the wealth, and substantial farms, with neat villages, the comfort of the country. English landscape may be compared to cabinet pictures, delicately beautiful and highly finished; German scenery to paintings for a vestibule, of bold outline and often sublime, but coarse and to be viewed with advantage only from a distance.

Northward, beyond London, we may make one stop, after a country, not otherwise necessary to be noticed, to mention Hardwick, in Derbyshire, a seat of the Duke of Devonshire, once the residence of the Earl of Shrewsbury, to whom Elizabeth deputed the custody of the unfortunate Mary. It stands on an easy height, a few miles to the left of the road from Mansfield to Chesterfield, and is approached through shady lanes, which conceal the view of it, till you are on the confines of the park. Three towers of hoary grey then rise with great majesty among old woods, and their summits appear to be covered with the lightly shivered fragments of battlements, which, however, are soon discovered to be perfectly carved open work, in which the letters E. S. frequently occur under a coronet, the initials, and the memorials of the vanity, of Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, who built the present edifice. Its tall features, of a most picturesque tint, were finely disclosed between the luxuriant woods and over the lawns of the park, which, every now and then, let in a glimpse of the Derbyshire hills. The scenery reminded us of the exquisite descriptions of Harewood,

and those of Hardwick once veiled a form as lovely as the ideal graces of the Poet, and conspired to a fate more tragical than that, which Harewood witnessed.

In front of the great gates of the castle court, the ground, adorned by old oaks, suddenly sinks to a darkly shadowed glade, and the view opens over the vale of Scarsdale, bounded by the wild mountains of the Peak. Immediately to the left of the present residence, some ruined features of the antient one, enwreathed with the rich drapery of ivy, give an interest to the scene, which the later, but more historical structure heightens and prolongs. We followed, not without emotion, the walk, which Mary had so often trodden, to the folding doors of the great hall, whose lofty grandeur, aided by silence and seen under the influence of a lowering sky, suited the temper of the whole scene. The tall windows, which half subdue the light they admit, just allowed us to distinguish the large figures in the tapestry, above the oak wainscoting, and shewed a colonnade of oak supporting a gallery along the bottom of the hall, with a pair of gigantic elk's horns flourishing between the windows opposite to the entrance. The scene of Mary's arrival and her feelings upon entering this solemn shade came involuntarily to the mind; the noise of horses' feet and many voices from the court; her proud yet gentle and melancholy look, as, led by my Lord Keeper, she passed slowly up the hall; his somewhat obsequious, yet jealous and vigilant air, while, awed by her dignity and beauty, he remembers the terrors of his own Queen; the silence and anxiety of her maids, and the bustle of the surrounding attendants.

From the hall a stair-case ascends to the gallery of a small chapel, in which the chairs and cushions, used by Mary, still remain, and proceeds to the first story, where only one apartment bears memorials of her imprisonment, the bed, tapestry and chairs having been worked by herself. This tapestry is richly embossed with emblematic figures, each with its title worked above it, and, having been scrupulously preserved, is still entire and fresh.

Over the chimney of an adjoining dining-room, to which, as well as to other apartments on this floor, some modern furniture has been added, is this motto carved in oak:

"There is only this: To fear God and keep his Commandments."

So much less valuable was timber than workmanship, when this mansion was constructed, that, where the stair-cases are not of stone, they are formed of solid oaken steps, instead of planks; such is that from the second, or state story to the roof, whence, on clear days, York and Lincoln Cathedrals are said to be included in the extensive prospect. This second floor is that, which gives its chief interest to the edifice. Nearly all the apartments of it were allotted to Mary; some of them for state purposes; and the furniture is known by other proofs, than its appearance, to remain as she left it. The chief room, or that of audience, is of uncommon loftiness, and strikes by its grandeur, before the veneration and tenderness arise, which its antiquities, and the plainly told tale of the sufferings they witnessed, excite.

The walls, which are covered to a considerable height with tapestry, are painted above with historical groups. The chairs are of black velvet, nearly concealed by a raised needle-work of gold, silver and colours, that mingle with surprising richness, and remain in fresh preservation. The upper end of the room is distinguished by a lofty canopy of the same materials, and by steps which support two chairs; so that the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury probably enjoyed their own stateliness here, as well as assisted in the ceremonies practised before Mary. A carpeted table, in front of the canopy, was, perhaps, the desk of Commissioners, or Secretaries, who here recorded some of the proceedings concerning her; below which, the room breaks into a spacious recess, where a few articles of furniture are deposited, not originally placed in it; a bed of state, used by Mary, the curtains of gold tissue, but in so tattered a condition, that its original texture can scarcely be perceived. This and the chairs, which accompany it, are supposed to have been much earlier than Mary's time.

A short passage leads from the state apartment to her own chamber, a small room, overlooked from the passage by a window, which enabled her attendants to know, that she was contriving no means of escape through the others into the court. The bed and chairs of this room are of black velvet, embroidered by herself; the toilet of gold tissue; all more decayed than worn, and probably used only towards the conclusion of her imprisonment here, when she was removed from some better apartment, in which the antient bed, now in the state-room, had been placed. The date 1599 is once or twice inscribed in this chamber; for no reason, that could relate to Mary, who was removed hence in 1584, and fell, by the often-blooded hands of Elizabeth, in 1587.

These are the apartments, distinguished by having been the residence of so unhappy a personage. On the other side of the mansion, a grand gallery occupies the length of the whole front, which is 165 feet, and contains many portraits, now placed carelessly on chairs, or the floor; amongst them an head of Sir Thomas More, apparently very fine; heads of Henries the Fourth, Seventh and Eighth; a portrait of Lady Jane Gray, meek and fair, before a harpsichord, on which a psalm-book is opened; at the bottom of the gallery, Elizabeth, slyly proud and meanly violent; and, at the top, Mary, in black, taken a short time before her death, her countenance much faded, deeply marked by indignation and grief, and reduced as if to the spectre of herself, frowning with suspicion upon all who approached it; the black eyes looking out from their corners, thin lips, somewhat aquiline nose and beautiful chin.

What remains of the more antient building is a ruin, which, standing nearly on the brink of the glade, is a fine object from this. A few apartments, though approached with difficulty through the fragments of others, are still almost entire, and the dimensions of that called the Giant's Chamber are remarkable for the beauty of their proportion.

From Hardwick to within a few miles of Middleton, the beauty of the country declines, while the sublimity is not perfected; but, from the north-west brow of Brampton Moor, the vast hills of Derbyshire appear, in wild and ghastly succession. Middleton, hewn out of the grey rocks, that impend over it, and scarcely distinguishable from them, is worth notice for its very small and neat octagon church, built partly by brief and partly by a donation from the Duke of Devonshire. The valley, or rather chasm, at the entrance of which it stands, is called Middleton Dale, and runs, for two miles, between perpendicular walls of rock, which have more the appearance of having been torn asunder by some convulsive rent of the earth, than any we have elsewhere seen. The strata are horizontal, and the edges of each are often distinct and rounded; one of the characteristics of granite. Three grey rocks, resembling castles, project from these solid walls, and, now and then, a lime-kiln, round like a bastion, half involves in smoke a figure, who, standing on the summit, looks the Witch of the Dale, on an edge of her cauldron, watching the workings of incantation.

The chasm opened, at length, to a hill, whence wild moorish mountains were seen on all sides, some entirely covered with the dull purple of heath, others green, but without enclosures, except sometimes a stone wall, and the dark sides of others marked only by the blue smoke of weeds, driven in circles near the ground.

Towards sun-set, from a hill in Cheshire, we had a vast view over part of that county and nearly all Lancashire, a scene of fertile plains and gentle heights, till some broad and towering mountains, at an immense distance, were but uncertainly distinguished from the clouds. Soon after, the cheerful populousness of the rich towns and villages in Lancashire supplied objects for attention of a different character; Stockport first, crowded with buildings and people, as much so as some of the busiest quarters in London, with large blazing fires in every house, by the light of which women were frequently spinning, and manufacturers issuing from their workshops and filling the steep streets, which the chaise rolled down with; dangerous rapidity; then an almost continued street of villages to Manchester, some miles before which the road was busy with passengers and carriages, as well as bordered by handsome country houses; and, finally for this day, Manchester itself; a second London; enormous to those, who have not seen the first, almost tumultuous with business, and yet well proved to afford the necessary peacefulness to science, letters and taste. And not only for itself may Manchester be an object of admiration, but for the contrast of its useful profits to the wealth of a neighbouring place, immersed in the dreadful guilt of the Slave Trade, with the continuance of which to believe national prosperity compatible, is to hope, that the actions of nations pass unseen before the Almighty, or to suppose extenuation of crimes by increase of criminality, and that the eternal laws of right and truth, which smite the wickedness of individuals, are too weak to struggle with the accumulated and comprehensive guilt of a national participation in robbery, cruelty and murder.

From Manchester to Lancaster the road leads through a pleasant and populous country, which rises gradually as it approaches the huge hills we had noticed in the distance from the brow of Cheshire, and whose attitudes now resembled those of the Rheingau as seen from Mentz. From some moors on this side of Lancaster the prospects open very extensively over a rich tract fading into blue ridges; while, on the left, long lines of distant sea appear, every now and then, over the dark woods of the shore, with vessels sailing as if on their summits. But the view from a hill descending to Lancaster is pre-eminent for grandeur, and comprehends an extent of sea and land, and a union of the sublime in both, which we have never seen equalled. In the green vale of the Lune below lies the town, spreading up the side of a round hill overtopped by the old towers of the castle and the church. Beyond, over a ridge of gentle heights, which bind the west side of the vale, the noble inlet of the sea, that flows upon the Ulverston and Lancaster sands, is seen at the feet of an amphitheatre formed by nearly all the mountains of the Lakes; an exhibition of alpine grandeur, both in form and colouring, which, with the extent of water below, compose a scenery perhaps faintly rivalling that of the Lake of Geneva. To the south and west, the Irish Channel finishes the view.

The antient town and castle of Lancaster have been so often and so well described, that little remains to be said of them. To the latter considerable additions are building in the Gothic style, which, when time shall have shaded the stone, will harmonize well wish the venerable towers and gatehouse of the old structure. From a turret rising over the leads of the castle, called John o' Gaunt's Chair, the prospect is still finer than from the terrace of the church-yard below. Overlooking the Lune and its green slopes, the eye ranges to the bay of the sea beyond, and to the Cumberland and Lancashire mountains. On an island near the extremity of the peninsula of Low Furness, the double point of Peel Castle starts up from the sea, but is so distant that it resembles a forked rock. This peninsula, which separates the bay of Ulverston from the Irish Channel, swells gradually into a pointed mountain called Blackcomb, thirty miles from Lancaster, the first in the amphitheatre, that binds the bay. Hence a range of lower, but more broken and forked summits, extends northward to the fells of High Furness, rolled behind each other, huge, towering and dark; then, higher still, Langdale Pikes, with a confusion of other fells, that crown the head of Windermere and retire towards Keswick, whose gigantic mountains, Helvellyn and Saddleback, are, however, sunk in distance below the horizon of the nearer ones. The top of Skiddaw may be discerned when the air is clear, but it is too far off to appear with dignity. From Windermere-Fells the heights soften towards the Vale of Lonsdale, on the east side of which Ingleborough, a mountain in Craven, rears his rugged front, the loftiest and most majestic in the scene. The nearer country, from this point of the landscape, is intersected with cultivated hills, between which the Lune winds its bright but shallow stream, falling over a weir and passing under a very handsome stone bridge at the entrance of the town, in its progress towards the sea. A ridge of rocky eminences shelters Lancaster on the east, whence they decline into the low and uninteresting country, that stretches to the Channel.

The appearance of the northern Fells is ever changing with the weather and shifting lights. Sometimes they resemble those evening clouds on the horizon, that catch the last gleams of the sun; at others, wrapt in dark mist, they are only faintly traced, and seem like stormy vapours rising from the sea. But in a bright day their appearance is beautiful; then, their grand outlines are distinctly drawn upon the sky, a vision of Alps; the rugged sides are faintly marked with light and shadow, with wood and rock, and here and there a cluster of white cottages, or farms and hamlets, gleam at their feet along the water's edge. Over the whole landscape is then drawn a softening azure, or sometimes a purple hue, exquisitely lovely, while the sea below reflects a brighter tint of blue.

FROM LANCASTER TO KENDAL.

Leaving Lancaster, we wound along the southern brow of the vale of the Lune, which there serpentizes among meadows, and is soon after shut up between steep shrubby banks. From the heights we had some fine retrospects of Lancaster and the distant sea; but, about three miles from the town, the hills open forward to a view as much distinguished by the notice of Mr. Gray, as by its own charms. We here looked down over a woody and finely broken fore-ground upon the Lune and the vale of Lonsdale, undulating in richly cultivated slopes, with Ingleborough, for the back-ground, bearing its bold promontory on high, the very crown and paragon of the landscape. To the west, the vale winds from sight among smoother hills; and the gracefully falling line of a mountain, on the left, forms, with the wooded heights, on the right, a kind of frame for the distant picture.

The road now turned into the sweetly retired vale of Caton, and by the village church-yard, in which there is not a single gravestone, to Hornby, a small straggling town, delightfully seated near the entrance of the vale of Lonsdale. Its thin toppling castle is seen among wood, at a considerable distance, with a dark hill rising over it. What remains of the old edifice is a square grey building, with a slender watch-tower, rising in one corner, like a feather in a hat, which joins the modern mansion of white stone, and gives it a singular appearance, by seeming to start from the centre of its roof.

In front, a steep lawn descends between avenues of old wood, and the park extends along the skirts of the craggy hill, that towers above. At its foot, is a good stone bridge over the Wenning, now shrunk in its pebbly bed, and, further on, near the castle, the church, shewing a handsome octagonal tower, crowned with battlements. The road then becomes extremely interesting, and, at Melling, a village on a brow some miles further, the view opens over the whole vale of Lonsdale. The eye now passes, beneath the arching foliage of some trees in the fore-ground, to the sweeping valley, where meadows of the most vivid green and dark woods, with white cottages and villages peeping from among them, mingle with surprising richness, and undulate from either bank of the Lune to the feet of hills. Ingleborough, rising from elegantly swelling ground, overlooked this enchanting vale, on the right, clouds rolling along its broken top, like smoke from a cauldron, and its hoary tint forming a boundary to the soft verdure and rich woodlands of the slopes, at its feet. The perspective was terminated by the tall peeping heads of the Westmoreland fells, the nearer ones tinged with faintest purple, the more distant with light azure; and this is the general boundary to a scene, in the midst of which, enclosed between nearer and lower hills, lies the vale of Lonsdale, of a character mild, delicate and reposing, like the countenance of a Madona.

Crossing a small bridge, we turned from Ingleborough, and passed very near the antient walls of Thirlham Castle, little of which is now remaining. The ruin is on a green broken knoll, one side of which is darkened with brush-wood and dwarf-oak. Cattle were reposing in the shade, on the bank of a rivulet, that rippled through what was formerly the castle ditch. A few old trees waved over what was once a tower, now covered with ivy.

Some miles further, we crossed the Leck, a shrunk and desolate stream, nearly choked with pebbles, winding in a deep rocky glen, where trees and shrubs marked the winter boundary of the waters. Our road, mounting a green eminence of the opposite bank, on which stands Overborough, the handsome modern mansion of Mr. Fenwick, wound between plantations and meadows, painted with yellow and purple flowers, like those of spring. As we passed through their gentle slopes, we had, now and then, sweet views between the foliage, on the left, into the vale of Lonsdale, now contracting in its course, and winding into ruder scenery. Among these catches, the best picture was, perhaps, where the white town of Kirby Lonsdale shelves along the opposite bank, having rough heathy hills immediately above it, and, below, a venerable Gothic bridge over the Lune, rising in tall arches, like an antient aqueduct; its grey tint agreeing well with the silvery lightness of the water and the green shades, that flourished from the steep margin over the abutments.

The view from this bridge, too, was beautiful. The river, foaming below among masses of dark rock, variegated with light tints of grey, as if touched by the painter's pencil, withdrew towards the south in a straight channel, with the woods of Overborough on the left. The vale, dilating, opened a long perspective to Ingleborough and many blue mountains more distant, with all the little villages we had passed, glittering on the intervening eminences. The colouring of some low hills, on the right, was particularly beautiful, long shades of wood being overtopped with brown heath, while, below, meadows of soft verdure fell gently towards the river bank.

Kirby Lonsdale, a neat little town, commanding the whole vale, is on the western steep. We staid two hours at it, gratified by witnessing, at the first inn we reached, the abundance of the country and the goodwill of the people. In times, when the prices of necessary articles are increasing with the taste for all unnecessary display, instances of cheapness may be to persons of small incomes something more than mere physical treasures; they have a moral value in contributing to independence of mind.

Here we had an early and, as it afterwards appeared, a very exaggerated specimen of the dialect of the country. A woman talked, for five minutes, against our window, of whose conversation we could understand scarcely a word. Soon after, a boy replied to a question, "I do na ken," and "gang" was presently the common word for go; symptoms of nearness to a country, which we did not approach, without delighting to enumerate the instances of genius and worth, that adorn it.

Leaving Kirby Lonsdale by the Kendal road, we mounted a steep hill, and, looking back from its summit upon the whole vale of Lonsdale, perceived ourselves to be in the mid-way between beauty and desolation, so enchanting was the retrospect and so wild and dreary the prospect. From the neighbourhood of Caton to Kirby the ride was superior, for elegant beauty, to any we had passed; this from Kirby to Kendal is of a character distinctly opposite. After losing sight of the vale, the road lies, for nearly the whole distance, over moors and perpetually succeeding hills, thinly covered with dark purple heath flowers, of which the most distant seemed black. The dreariness of the scene was increased by a heavy rain and by the slowness of our progress, jostling amongst coal carts, for ten miles of rugged ground. The views over the Westmoreland mountains were, however, not entirely obscured; their vast ridges were visible in the horizon to the north and west, line over line, frequently in five or six ranges. Sometimes the intersecting mountains opened to others beyond, that fell in deep and abrupt precipices, their profiles drawing towards a point below and seeming to sink in a bottomless abyss.

On our way over these wilds, parts of which are called Endmoor and Cowbrows, we overtook only long trains of coal carts, and, after ten miles of bleak mountain road, began to desire a temporary home, somewhat sooner than we perceived Kendal, white-smoking in the dark vale. As we approached, the outlines of its ruinous castle were just distinguishable through the gloom, scattered in masses over the top of a small round hill, on the right. At the entrance of the town, the river Kent dashed in foam down a weir; beyond it, on a green slope, the gothic tower of the church was half hid by a cluster of dark trees; gray fells glimmered in the distance.

We were lodged at another excellent inn, and, the next morning, walked over the town, which has an air of trade mingled with that of antiquity. Its history has been given in other places, and we are not able to discuss the doubt, whether it was the Roman Brocanonacio, or not. The manufacture of cloth, which our statute books testify to have existed as early as the reign in which Falstaff is made to allude to it, appears to be still in vigour, for the town is surrounded, towards the river, with dyeing-grounds. We saw, however, no shades of "Kendal green," or, indeed, any but bright scarlet.

The church is remarkable for three chapels, memorials of the antient dignity of three neighbouring families the Bellinghams, Stricklands and Parrs. These are enclosures, on each side of the altar, differing from pews chiefly in being large enough to contain tombs. Mr. Gray noticed them minutely in the year 1769. They were then probably entire; but the wainscot or railing, which divided the chapel of the Parrs from the aisle, is now gone. Of two stone tombs in it one is enclosed with modern railing, and there are many remnants of painted arms on the adjoining windows. The chapel of the Stricklands, which is between this and the altar, is separated from the church aisle by a solid wainscot, to the height of four feet, and after that by a wooden railing with broken fillagree ornaments. That of the Bellinghams contains an antient tomb, of which the brass plates, that bore inscriptions and arms, are now gone, but some traces of the latter remain in plaistered stone at the side. Over it, are the fragments of an helmet, and, in the roof, those of armorial bearings, carved in wood. On a pillar, near this, is an inscription, almost obliterated, in which the following words may yet be traced:

"Dame Thomasim Thornburgh Wiffe of Sir William Thornburgh Knyght Daughter of Sir Robert Bellingham Gentle Knyght: the ellventhe of August On thousand fyue hundreth eightie too."

The Saxon has been so strongly engrafted on our language, that, in reading old inscriptions, especially those, which are likely to have been spelt, according to the pronunciation, one is frequently reminded by antient English words of the modern German synonyms. A German of the present day would say for eleven, eilf, pronounced long like eilve, and for five, funf, pronounced like fuynf.

Over the chief seat in the old pew of the Bellinghams is a brass plate, engraved with the figure of a man in armour, and, on each side of it, a brass escutcheon, of which that on the right has a motto thus spelled, Ains. y L'est. Under the figure is the following inscription, also cut in brass:

Heer lyeth the bodye of Alan Bellingham esquier who maryed Catheryan daughter of Anthonye Ducket esquier by whom he had no children after whose decease he maryed Dorothie daughter of Thomas Sanford esquier of whom he had —— sonnes & eight daughters, of which five sonnes & 7 daughters with the said Dorothie ar yeat lyving, he was threescore and one yares of age & dyed y^e 7 of Maye A^o dni 1577.

The correctness of inserting the unpronounced consonants in the words Eight and Daughters, notwithstanding the varieties of the other orthography in this inscription, is a proof of the universality of the Saxon mode of spelling, with great abundance and even waste of letters; a mode, which is so incorporated with our language, that those, who are for dispensing with it in some instances, as in the final k in "publick" and other words, should consider what a general change they have to effect, or what partial incongruities they must submit to.

Kendal is built on the lower steeps of a hill, that towers over the principal street, and bears on one of its brows a testimony to the independence of the inhabitants, an obelisk dedicated to liberty and to the memory of the Revolution in 1688. At a time, when the memory of that revolution is reviled, and the praises of liberty itself endeavoured to be suppressed by the artifice of imputing to it the crimes of anarchy, it was impossible to omit any act of veneration to the blessings of this event. Being thus led to ascend the hill, we had a view of the country, over which it presides; a scene simple, great and free as the spirit revered amidst it.

FROM KENDAL TO BAMPTON AND HAWSWATER.

Of two roads from Kendal to Bampton one is through Long Sleddale, the other over Shap-fell, the king of the Westmoreland mountains; of which routes the last is the most interesting for simple sublimity, leading through the heart of the wildest tracts and opening to such vast highland scenery as even Derbyshire cannot shew. We left Kendal by this road, and from a very old, ruinous bridge had a full view of the castle, stretching its dark walls and broken towers round the head of a green hill, to the southward of the town. These reliques are, however, too far separated by the decay of large masses of the original edifice, and contain little that is individually picturesque.

The road now lay through shady lanes and over undulating, but gradually ascending ground, from whence were pleasant views of the valley, with now and then a break in the hills, on the left, opening to a glimpse of the distant fells towards Windermere, gray and of more pointed form than any we had yet seen; for hitherto the mountains, though of huge outline, were not so broken, or alpine in their summits as to strike the fancy with surprise. After about three miles, a very steep hill shuts up the vale to the North, and from a gray rock, near the summit, called Stone-cragg, the prospect opens over the vale of Kendal with great dignity and beauty. Its form from hence seems nearly circular; the hills spread round it, and sweep with easy lines into the bottom, green nearly to their summits, where no fantastic points bend over it, though rock frequently mingles with the heath. The castle, or its low green hill, looked well, nearly in the centre of the landscape, with Kendal and its mountain, on the right. Far to the south, were the groves of Leven's park, almost the only wood in the scene, and, over the heights beyond, blue hills bounded the horizon. On the west, an opening in the near steeps discovered clusters of huge and broken fells, while other breaks, on the east, shewed long ridges stretching towards the south. Nearer us and to the northward, the hills rose dark and awful, crowding over and intersecting each other in long and abrupt lines, heath and crag their only furniture.

The rough knolls around us and the dark mountain above gave force to the verdant beauty and tranquillity of the vale below, and seemed especially to shelter from the storms of the north some white farms and cottages, scattered among enclosures in the hollows. Soon after reaching the summit of the mountain itself

and we looked down on the left into Long Sleddale, a little scene of exquisite beauty, surrounded with images of greatness. This narrow vale, or glen, shewed a level of the brightest verdure, with a few cottages scattered among groves, enclosed by dark fells, that rose steeply, yet gracefully, and, at their summits, bent forward in masses of shattered rock. An hugely pointed mountain, called Keintmoor-head, shuts up this sweet scene to the north, rising in a sudden precipice from the vale, and heightening, by barren and gloomy steeps, the miniature beauty, that glowed at its feet. Two mountains, called Whiteside and Potter's-fell, screen the perspective; Stone-crag is at the southern end, fronting Keintmoor-head. The vale, seen beyond the broken ground we were upon, formed a landscape of, perhaps, unexampled variety and grace of colouring; the tender green of the lowland, the darker verdure of the woods ascending the mountains, the brown rough heath above them, and the impending crags over all, exhibit their numerous shades, within a space not more than two miles long, or half a mile in breadth.

From the right of our road another valley extended, whose character is that of simple sublimity, unmixed with any tint of beauty. The vast, yet narrow perspective sweeps in ridges of mountains, huge, barren and brown, point beyond point, the highest of which, Howgill-fell, gives its name to the whole district, in which not a wood, a village, or a farm appeared to cheer the long vista. A shepherd boy told us the names of almost all the heights within the horizon, and we are sorry not to have written them, for the names of mountains are seldom compounded of modern, or trivial denominations, and frequently are somewhat descriptive of their prototypes. He informed us also, that we should go over eight miles of Shap-fell, without seeing a house; and soon after, at Haw's-foot, we took leave of the last on the road, entering then a close valley, surrounded by stupendous mountains of heath and rock, more towering and abrupt than those, that had appeared in moorlands on the other side of Kendal. A stream, rolling in its rocky channel, and crossing the road under a rude bridge, was all that broke the solitary silence, or gave animation to the view, except the flocks, that hung upon the precipices, and which, at that height, were scarcely distinguishable from the gray round stones, thickly starting from out the heathy steeps. The Highlands of Scotland could scarcely have offered to Ossian more images of simple greatness, or more circumstances for melancholy inspiration. Dark glens and fells, the mossy stone, the lonely blast, descending on the valley, the roar of distant torrents every where occurred; and to the bard the "song of spirits" would have swelled with these sounds, and their fleeting forms have appeared in the clouds, that frequently floated along the mountain tops.

The road, now ascending Shap-fell, alternately climbed the steeps and sunk among the hollows of this sovereign mountain, which gives its name to all the surrounding hills; and, during an ascent of four miles, we watched every form and attitude of the features, which composed this vast scenery. Sometimes we looked from a precipice into deep vallies, varied only with shades of heath, with the rude summer hut of the shepherd, or by streams accumulating into torrents; and, at others, caught long prospects over high lands as huge and wild as the nearer ones, which partially intercepted them.

The flocks in this high region are so seldom disturbed by the footsteps of man, that they have not learned to fear him; they continued to graze within a few feet of the carriage, or looked quietly at it, seeming to consider these mountains as their own.

Near the summit of the road, though not of the hill, a retrospective glance gave us a long view over the fells, and of a rich distance towards Lancaster, rising into blue hills, which admitted glimpses of sparkling sea in the bay beyond. This gay perspective, lighted up by a gleam of sunshine, and viewed between the brown lines of the nearer mountains, shewed like the miniature painting of a landscape, illuminated beyond a darkened fore-ground.

At the point of every steep, as we ascended, the air seemed to become thinner, and, at the northern summit of Shap-fell, which we reached after nearly two hours' toil, the wind blew with piercing intenseness, making it difficult to remain as long as was due to our admiration of the prospect. The scene of mountains, which burst upon us, can be compared only to the multitudinous waves of the sea. On the northern, western and eastern scope of the horizon rose vast ridges of heights, their broken lines sometimes appearing in seven or eight successive ranges, though shewing nothing either fantastic or peaked in their forms. The autumnal lights, gleaming on their sides, or shadows sweeping in dark lines along them, produced a very sublime effect; while summits more remote were often misty with the streaming shower, and others glittered in the partial rays, or were coloured with the mild azure of distance. The greater tract of the intervening hills and Shap-fell itself were, at this time, darkened with clouds, while Fancy, awed by the gloom, imaged the genius of Westmoreland brooding over it and directing the scowling storm.

A descent of nearly four miles brought us to Shap, a straggling village, lying on the side of a bleak hill, feebly sheltered by clumps of trees. Here, leaving the moorlands, we were glad to find ourselves again where "bells have knolled to church," and in the midst of civilized, though simple life. After a short rest, at a cleanly little inn, we proceeded towards Bampton, a village five miles further in a vale, to which it gives its name, and one mile from Hawswater, the lake, that invited us to it. As the road advanced, the fells of this lake fronted it, and, closing over the southern end of Bampton vale, were the most interesting objects in the view. They were of a character very different from any yet seen; tall, rocky, and of more broken and pointed form. Among them was the high blue peak, called Kidstow-pike; the broader ridge of Wallow-crag; a round and still loftier mountain—Ickolm-moor, beyond, and, further yet, other ranges of peaked summits, that overlook Ullswater.

In a hollow on the left of the road, called the Vale of Magdalene, are the ruins of Shap-abbey, built in the reign of John, of which little now appears except a tower with pointed windows. The situation is deeply secluded, and the gloom of the surrounding mountains may have accorded well with monastic melancholy.

Proceeding towards Bampton we had a momentary peep into Hawswater, sunk deep among black and haggard rocks, and overtopped by the towering fells before named, whose summits were involved in tempest, till the sun, suddenly breaking out from under clouds, threw a watery gleam aslant the broken top of Kidstow-pike; and his rays, struggling with the shower, produced a fine effect of light, opposed to the gloom, that wrapt Ickolm-moor and other huge mountains.

We soon after looked down from the heights of Bampton upon its open vale, checquered with corn and meadows, among which the slender Lowther wound its way from Hawswater to the vale of Eden, crossing that of Bampton to the north. The hills, enriched here and there with hanging woods and seats, were cultivated nearly to their summits, except where in the south the rude heights of Hawswater almost excluded the lake and shut up the valley. Immediately below us Bampton grange lay along the skirt of the hill, and crossed the Lowther, a gray, rambling and antient village, to which we descended among rough common, darkened by plantations of fir, and between corn enclosures.

The interruption, which enclosed waters and pathless mountains give to the intercourse and business of ordinary life, renders the district, that contains the lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland, more thinly inhabited than is due to the healthiness of the climate and, perhaps, to the richness of the vallies. The roads are always difficult from their steepness, and in winter are greatly obstructed by snow. That over Shap-fell to Kendal was, some years since, entirely impassable, till the inhabitants of a few scattered towns subscribed thirty pounds, and a way was cut wide enough for one horse, but so deep, that the snow was, on each side, above the rider's head. It is not in this age of communication and intelligence, that any person will be credulously eager to suppose the inhabitants of one part of the island considerably or generally distinguished in their characters from those of another; yet, perhaps, none can immerge themselves in this country of the lakes, without being struck by the superior simplicity and modesty of the people. Secluded from great towns and from examples of selfish splendour, their minds seem to act freely in the sphere of their own affairs, without interruption from envy or triumph, as to those of others. They are obliging, without servility, and plain but not rude, so that, when, in accosting you, they omit the customary appellations, you perceive it to be the familiarity of kindness, not of disrespect; and they do not bend with meanness, or hypocrisy, but shew an independent well meaning, without obtrusiveness and without the hope of more than ordinary gain.

Their views of profit from strangers are, indeed, more limited than we could have believed, before witnessing it. The servants at the little inns confess themselves, by their manner of receiving what you give, to be almost as much surprised as pleased. A boy, who had opened four or five gates for us between Shap and Bampton, blushed when we called to him to have some halfpence; and it frequently happened, that persons, who had looked at the harness, or rendered some little services of that sort on the road, passed on, before any thing could be offered them. The confusion of others, on being paid, induced us to suppose, at first, that enough had not been given; but we were soon informed, that nothing was expected.

The inns, as here at Bampton, are frequently humble; and those, who are disposed to clamour for luxuries, as if there was a crime in not being able to supply them, may confound a simple people, and be themselves greatly discontented, before they go. But those, who will be satisfied with comforts, and think the experience of integrity, carefulness and goodwill is itself a luxury, will be glad to have stopped at Bampton and at several other little villages, where there is some sort of preparation for travellers.

Nor is this secluded spot without provision for the mind. A beneficed grammar school receives the children of the inhabitants, and sends, we believe, some to an University. Bishop Gibson received his education at it. Bishop Law, who was born at Bampton, went daily across one, or two of the rudest fells on the lake to another school, at Martindale; an exercise of no trifling fatigue, or resolution; for among the things to be gained by seeing the lakes is a conception of the extreme wildness of their boundaries. You arrive with a notion, that you can and dare rove any where amongst the mountains; and have only to see three to have the utmost terror of losing your way.

The danger of wandering in theses regions without a guide is increased by an uncertainty, as to the titles of heights; for the people of each village have a name for the part of a mountain nearest to themselves, and they sometimes call the whole by that name. The circumference of such heights is also too vast, and the flexures too numerous to admit of great accuracy. Skiddaw, Saddleback and Helvellyn, may, however be certainly distinguished. There are others, a passage over which would save, perhaps, eight or ten miles out of twenty, but which are so little known, except to the shepherds, that they are very rarely crossed by travellers. We could not trust to any person's knowledge of Harter-fell, beyond the head of Hawswater.