ble aspect; it is within the eighty years that the last Eagles fled before the advance of man.

The Land of Wordsworth, especially including Cumberland and Westmoreland, the North of Yorkshire, and some parts of North Lancashire, forms indeed a peculiar and remarkable territory of Great Britain, a portion of the country where nature is seen in our land on the most bold and magnificent scale, and where rural and primitive customs have lingered longest. It will be remembered that Wordsworth was a link between three generations, his writings however and their relation to the locality he inhabited described it rather as it was in the middle and close of the eighteenth century, the whole life was then different to what it is now-it is the life, the reader will see of a hundred years sincethere is not a particular in which the country is the same, in that age people wore very little cloth indeed that was not home-spun, and the fleeces of their flocks, also spun at home, furnished the rest of their apparel; the females of every family knit part of the yarn into stockings, and the remainder of it was manufactured by a neighbouring farmer into a kind of duffil for the clothing of the men, and a sort of russet for the use of the women. How should we be surprised, did we look into those old farm houses and cottages where the women were working up the raw material into domestic uses of various kinds. All apparel seems to have been wrought up at home, it was apparently a poor time, wages were very low, and yet by the virtue of economy the poor performed wonders. Plain was the apparel, the

IN THE LAST CENTURY.

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houses too were plain, the traveller may see them still; on the side of hills, by the banks of brooks and rivers, they seem many of them not to have been remarkable for their weather tightness-rude buildings very easily constructed; the fire constantly kindled from turf or peat, and the exposure to the elements, making the hat a very useful article of clothing in doors, and the furniture was of a piece with the house, the modern housewife would find few of those conveniences apparently so indispensable now; wardrobes and dressing tables were not as yet known, but in the stead, long rudely carved chests, where were deposited the clothes of the family-and the malt, oatmeal, and dried meat—we are speaking it will be seen of families tolerable well off in the world; refinement did not then as now draw a line of separation between the various members of the family, all were found in the same room, and the distinction between the ranks was maintained in quite another way than by the artificial distinctions our modern manners have imposed; all the furniture was heavy, mostly massive oak, wooden vessels were eaten from and drunk out of; there were no light chairs, no chiffoniers, none of those delicacies which make now the household-room so winning, and comfortable a place. The Cabinet Maker was as almost unknown as a magician; the fire-side at winter would present characteristics now scarcely ever seen in England, perhaps not to be met with at all; the corner of the chimney was furnished with benches for four or five persons, and a screen was generally placed round them to ward off the blasts and cold airs from

the badly jointed doors, and there, were told the tales to which childhood listened, shivering, to tales of witchcraft, and of fairies; the aged crone, or the old man would delight to awaken in the young the impressions awakened in their own mind by similar tales in the first days of their youth or childhood; meantime perhaps some more lusty and high spirited would be found in the middle of the floor, hunting the rolling-pin, at that time a very common game; on rare occasions there was the posset cup, and among the old, the game of cards, which lasted the better part of the night; clocks too were quite unknown in most of the districts of the lakes; the people of the mountains followed all their occupations by the light of the stars, by the sun and the moon, this may seem to our ideas strange, but there are many places yet where the clock has only been recently introduced. In that state of society there were few who were separated from their neighbours by the possession of a very much larger amount of property, and when all were equals there could not be a great amount of refinement, for that springs from the habits of those who enjoy a superiority of fortune or education, which usually arises from that superiority-nor must we forget to mention a peculiarity of the property of the Lakes. The west moorlands were said to be the retreat of the Saxons, but it is evident, that that Ethnographical distinction does not rightly distinguish the race, the first residents were rather it may be presumed of Scandinavian of Danish or Norwegian descent, there is a greater proportion of names and terminations which fix the

origin of a locality as Scandinavian than in any other part of England except Lincolnshire, and perhaps the proportion is not greater there, when the populations of the two Counties, Westmoreland and Cumberland, as compared with Lincolnshire, are taken into consideration.*

In these dales and hills the traveller will find few if any remains of Norman Feudalism, the Feudalism of the Castle and the Villain, yet there are traces of another kind of homage, the walls, the divisions of the property of the Dalesmen are the enclosures of land granted from the wealthy Abbeys of the neighbourhood to emancipated serfs for protecting them from wolves, and holding themselves engaged to go to the wars; the very word Dalesman it is said does not arise from the dales of the region, but from the word deyler, which means to distribute; and the crofts have been held mostly for many generations, thus the descent of the occupants of the soil is very remarkable, and their independence has been guaranteed to them in a peculiar manner for centuries, the life has been one of singular seclusion. This life in many of its features our Poet has attempted to paint in a series of Mountain Idylls, but it is necessary indeed in order perfectly to realise the life and beauty of the Poems, to understand the moral peculiarities of the locality not less than the physical; the one has, and has ever had, as marked peculiarities as the other, and the character of the scenery is in no

See Worsaae.

little degree reflected in the mind of the people; there is a haughty and magnanimous nobility, a lofty bearing of freedom, which suits well the children of the mountains.

THE LAND OF WORDSWORTH is a wide and extensive land, he has memorialised his visits to many parts of our own country and Scotland, and the continent of Europe, but the land of Wordsworth especially is Westmoreland and Cumberland, and the vigour and truth of many of his descriptions can only be perceived and acknowledged by those who have become familiar with our English mountains and lakes; it is no deterioration to the glory and greatness, the universality and simplicity of the poetry, to say that many of the figures can only be apprehended by an acquaintance with mountain solitudes and scenes thus,

"I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng."

If the reader, travelling through the depth of the rocky wilderness, away from every sound save the occasional bleating of a sheep, the tinkle of the waterfalls from the far hill tops, or the suggestive rush of the waters at his feet over the stony bed of the stream, or perhaps in a scene where even these indications of life are not, where silence the most profound rests and waits; if in such a spot the reader shouts in the full strength of his voice he may understand something of the meaning of that line, what in nature is more suggestive than ECHOES heard among the mountains, fancy becomes imperial instantly, and peoples the solitude with all strange and