N the midwinter of an exceptionally dismal and unhappy year for England, the writer hereof was one of a company assembled in the studio of an eminent artist in London to listen to an essay written and read by a young literary lady. The company numbered about sixty, and consisted chiefly of poets, artists, and literary critics. The subject selected by our essayist was the old poem "Tristan," by Gottfried von Strasburg. The authoress by finest artistic touches brought before us the simple pathos and sweetness of that most passionate of medieval love stories, and with learning treated comparatively the variations of a legend found in many regions, each of which now claims to have originated it. What a picture did old Gottfried bring before us of the enchanted valley to which the hapless Queen Iseult and her lover wandered when driven forth from the palace of the King of Cornwall! A valley green and flower-gemmed, with every tree pleasant for shade or fruit; there is a grove of olive-trees in which nightingales sing, and a wondrous fountain leaping to a diamond-tree in the sunshine, and singing in the moonlight, which seems never to wane for the lovers-who dwell there three years in a grot beauti ful enough to have been sculptured for fairies. was as to the country in which the legend originated; and what was my surprise to For our little assembly in Fitzroy Square find nearly all claiming it as a purely this dream of beauty had the background British-Celt poem! There might be a quesof the most dark and dismal winter known tion whether it were an Irish, Scotch, or under the reign of Victoria. Snows, rains, Cornish legend; but not even the olivefogs, and freezing winds had persisted trees seemed to stagger the general conthrough months in giving some physical viction that the paradise was evolved on corollary to a moral season of frauds and these islands, and the philtre surviving in failures, depression in trade, and conse- the penny love-drops still bought by Highquent strikes and starvation, miserable land lassies in remote districts. One wars upon foreign tribes, and angry politic- scholar present ventured to suggest an al discords at home. As against this black- Oriental origin, but no one seconded him. ness was set the picture of the olive grove As for myself, I sat silent. I thought I and nightingales, the fountain, flowers, knew the far region of fairy grots and and fairy grot, with even the side sugges- fountains, but would not mention it, for tion of a genial climate in Iseult's single it was with an admiration akin to awe that garment, through which her limbs were I witnessed the simple faith of these culdisplayed as much as was seemly," one tured gentlemen and ladies in the paradimight almost have expected that the poet- saic resources of their country. I had no ic and artistic company would rise up with heart to express my misgivings that the a determination to adjourn in a body to three sweet years of the lovers would have some southern land where the citron been cut short in any British valley where blooms, and the orange lights up the leafy they might attempt to dwell in such a glooms. But mark what followed. No primitive way; that there are only a few sooner was the delightful paper concluded mud-holes called caves in this country, than the comments and criticisms of those which it would require extra fairy-power present began. The main question raised to transform into lovers' grots; that the leaping fountain would have to be reversed and made to fall from the sky before it could resemble anything known to the British landscape. What is all that scenery compared with the power of the poetic imagination to see it where it does not exist? Here was a pleasant illustration of the especial character of the English poet; the intensity of his inner life; his power of second-sight, so to say, and of seeing his picture under a light that never was on sea or land. The beautiful scenery of Great Britain has been so largely evolved out of the inner consciousness of poets that it would be an interesting experiment to take an imaginative American on a tour of the English lakes under an impression that he was travelling in Wales. The American who has seen the best mountain and lake scenery of his own country might pronounce the Welsh scenery more grand than that of the English lakes; that is, supposing he could see the two as so much combination of land and water; but that he can not do: he must see these English lakes as exalted and spiritualized in a poetic mirage. Never again can one look upon mere Rydal Water; he must see therein the reflected vault of of a week will have to let some sunshine through when one is wandering after the zigzag track of cheery Christopher North. The scenery is all picturesque, and sometimes sublime. But its chief charm of decoration is that which the poets have given it. One finds not here the quaint white turrets lanced from the river-side hills of France, or the graceful chalets which give an air of culture to the Italian lakes. Art has done nothing for the English lakes, and, I am sorry to say, Religion has done rather worse, in surrounding some of them with remarkably ugly churches-the ugliest, perhaps, being that at Ambleside, of which Harriet Martineau wrote, "There have been various reductions of the beauty of the valley within twenty years or so; but this is the worst, because the most conspicuous." The weather is rarely beautiful, and "seeing the lakes" sometimes means glimpsing lunettes between the points of an umbrella. Here are no peasants dancing in gay dresses, nor merry fairs surviving from that mythical realm, "merrie old England." The traveller finds here beautiful Nature unadorned but not inanimate; through reverent genius a subtle life-giving breath name. "Poet Close" sends his poems to all royal and titled folk in the world, and makes the most of any formal acknowledgment of their receipt which may be returned to him. In response to a remark made to him on the rare advantage which tourists and residents at Bowness have in seeing a poet selling his works in a book-stall, when so many other poets-the Laureate, for instance-are shy of the public, he answered, grandly, "No man in England, or the wide, wide world, ever did what I have done and am now doing-selling my own books, ay, and corresponding with crown Lake District first at Windermere. The pounds in addition to his first pension village that begins to bear that name is a payments. recent accretion around the station. The knowing traveller does not stop there, but at Bowness, where he finds the hotel "Old England," which more than merits its Its beautiful garden slopes to the waters of Windermere, and one may there eat the finest fish of the country-or what ¦ he will think such just after travelling from London-the "char," while watching the fisherman with his sail, who is netting the next. Agassiz identified this strange fish, found in five of these lakes, and nowhere else in the country, with the Ombre chevalier of Lake Geneva, and it is surmised that the Romans introduced ited heads, the late Majesty of France, and into these waters. If so, there are few Roman remains which the traveller will find so interesting in this region as this pretty foot-long char, with its golden flesh beneath silvery raiment. Why it is called a "char" I can not say, unless it be that like chores and char-women it comes round at a certain time. England's glorious Queen, and also her future King!" So passeth the glory of Wordsworthshire! There is not now a poet on all that hallowed ground, and straight uprises Close to style himself "the Bard of Westmoreland.” The only compensation for this which I found at Bowness was when a really good player There are other things also found at the on the harp came to our hotel door, aclakes which observe the like periodicity-companied by a young Westmoreland the organ-grinders, for instance, and "the Poet Close." Every year during the tourist season Close leaves his distant home, and settles himself at Bowness to sell what he calls poetry. He is the son of a Westmoreland butcher, who left his vocation to butcher the Queen's English like a Zulu. On the occasion of the marriage of the late Lord Lonsdale, Close sent him some verses, of which here is a specimen: "The Honorable William Lowther, His nephew, now Lord Lonsdale, We wish all health and happiness, Alfred Tennyson never made more mon- woman who sang sweetly some old Border ballads. Like the Scotch, they are mainly in the sad minor key, as is apt to be the case with songs of a people whose local patriotic memories are hopeless traditions of the past, and survive only in their songs. On the Border even these have become few, but there have been imitations of them, and most of the tunes are somewhat modified Scotch airs. There was another sign at Bowness of the passing away of ancient glories from the earth. The only interesting building there is a church of respectable antiquity, dedicated to St. Martin, and now the parish church. But from this old church every trace of St. Martin has so utterly passed away that the intelligent young girl who showed us the interior did not seem even to have heard the dear old saint's name. There are fairly preserved remains of a finely stained chancel window (brought from Furness Abbey), in which one may discern the Crucifixion, with the Virgin on one side and St. John on the other, the arms of France and England quartered above, and a group of monks beneath; there are two mitred abbots, and a St. George slaying the dragon. But though around this window and in various parts of the church there are armorial bearings of old families in the |