neighborhood, notably the Flemings, I could find no vestige of the saint who divided his cloak with the beggar, and after whom the first Christian church in England-still standing at Canterbury-was named. The decline of St. Martin before the dragon-slayer is a curious fact. In 1837 the republic of Buenos Ayres came to the conclusion that St. Martin, the patron saint of that country, had not adequately responded to the attentions of the citizens, and they voted his dismission, awarding him, however, as a pension for his ancient services, four wax candles of one pound each and a mass in the cathedral per annum. They elected Ignatius Loyola to the office of patron saint in his place. In England something of the same kind appears to have gradually taken place. Perhaps Martin, being the special weather saint, allowed so much rain-fall that the people gradually gave him up, though whether they got much by it any one who has passed recent years in England may have doubts. The church-yard at Bowness holds the tomb of one good and learned man it is inscribed "Ricardi Watson, Episcopi Landavensis, cineribus sacrum, obiit Julii 1, A.D. 1816, ætatis 72." This Bishop of Llandaff, author of The Apology for the Bible, resided at Calgarth Park, near by. His father taught school at Haversham, Westmoreland, forty years. The bishop was the most vigorous opponent of Thomas Paine, and in their controversy his learning was graced by a charity little known at that time, and which caused him to remark on the sublimity of Paine's writing concerning the attributes of the Deity. The rose-window of the dawn was flashing its tints all over Windermere on that July morning when I first gazed upon that beautiful lake. It was like the fairest dream. Green islets made up of trees sat upon it, their foliage perfectly reflected in the translucent surface. Here and there small snowy sails were seen, and the curving wooded shores up and down gave a perfect fringe to the opalescent water. A long range of dark blue hills made a frame for the picture. It was a fascination that drew my friend and me without a word to the edge of the water; and I suspect it was only because we found a boat there, prepared for such fascinations, that my young comrade, an artist, was rescued from the probable result of a mad impulse to swim the lake to Belle Isle. We had soon glided over to it, and were surprised to find no sirens there. But we found them presently, and heard them: a choir of birds, lilies, and oracular oaks, "When summer came, And now a third small island, where survived -WORDSWORTH. Prelude, ii. have long noses, and were called "longnebbed." A venerable friend tells me that he remembers to have heard grace before meat in Scotland in these words: "Frae witches an' warlocks an' a' langnebbed creatures, guid Lord deliver us!" I remarked to my comrade that there ought to be some weird legend about this ferry; but our boatman had never heard of any, and of course the Swan-maidens would not confess to any. Nevertheless, in the evening, when we spoke of going over the ferry by moonlight, they told us that under no circumstances did the ferryboat ever stir after sunset; and on exploring this fact, I found covered up underneath it a tradition that once upon a time a ferryman had responded to a call in the night, and on his return was It appears rather droll at first thought to find that a solid Manchester manufacturer has purchased this island and its pleasant mansion. In ancient times it would have been the home of some saint-gloomy, would not say what he had seen, ly hermit-some Godric or Cuthbert and soon went mad and died. It was seeking a lonely paradise. One would ex- a long time ago, and I hope the shade pect a poet to dwell here. (What an ideal of the poor ferryman will forgive me the home it would have been for Words- satisfaction with which I heard this saga worth!) But on reflection it is just as of the Nab, though this is tempered with pleasant to think of the Manchester man regret that he left no description of the coming all the way up here, and investing Nose of the traveller who summoned him so much of his gold in a summer solitude. at night, and fastened the boat to its moorThis is his way of keeping, amid the ings for all subsequent nights. murky air and moil of Manchester, one window open to the azure. The poets already have their inward Belle Isle, and can better spare this visible one. "She was an elfin pinnace; lustily Possibly the phantom by which the ferryman was pursued was the same that pursued young Wordsworth when he was a school-boy in the neighborhood. "It At some distance onward, near the was an act of stealth and troubled pleasouthern end of the isle, two swans show-sure," he tells us, in the “Prelude" (ii.), ed themselves for a moment, then vanish- when one summer evening, finding a boat ed. We rowed that way, but did not see tied to a willow, he unloosed it, and pushthem again. But we presently saw a ed from shore, fixing his eye upon a cragcharming tanglewood and a solitary tow-gy summit, i. e., a Nab. er, inhabited by a beautiful maiden and her sharp-eyed female guardian; and, according to all orthodox folk-lore in the world, the swans must have turned into these. That they were Swan-maidens was further suggested by the fact that their tower was close to a ferry, bearing the name of Ferry Nab. The name "Nab" is given to pointed mountainous projections in this neighborhood, as Ben and Pen are used in Scotland and Wales and elsewhere; but in the name of Grimm I repudiate such an explanation of this Nab, which has no more right to be named after a sharp mountain peak than the nib of my pen. The mountain nab and the pen nib both come from Anglo-Saxon nebbe, a nose. Now anciently, throughout Scotland and all this region, imps, consequently witches, were supposed to I dipped my oars into the silent lake, And serious mood; but after I had seen Remained, no pleasant images of trees, analyze such an experience as this, his power to detach it from himself and give it body and life in a poem; let the refined scholar relapse into the peasant of the past; and what have you? A superstiSubtract from Wordsworth his power to tious ferryman, with a bad conscience, conjuring a phantom out of yon dark mountain, and losing his wits. The tower near the ferry is called the "station." It has been built merely as an outlook, and is owned by the proprietor of Belle Isle. The more elderly of the Swan-maidens took us to the upper room of this commonplace edifice, and showed us how the lake and landscape looked through different-colored glasses. The windows, which occupied nearly all of three walls, were of variously colored glass. Looking through one and another of these we were assured we should see the scenery as it appeared in each of the seasons. But my friend the artist was absurdly fastidious; pronounced the autumnal scene a "huckleberry view," and almost dislocated his neck to get at some colorless glass through which he might see the unadorned Windermere. Fortunately the elderly Swan-maiden had no idea of the meaning of huckleberry, and the artist is so suave even in his execrations that we escaped being ourselves transformed. We found the younger Swan-maiden, in the absence of the other, a very merry witch, and were not surprised to learn that she was the rustic belle of the neighborhood—or had been, for she had just plighted her troth to a youth who had won a prize in a walking match. "Are you not sometimes lonely over here?" we had asked this Swan-maiden. "Do I look so?" she answered, archly, as she wrung with her white hands a white something from the wash-tub (no doubt part of her plumage). "Not particularly," we admitted, "but in winter, when it is cold, frozen, snowy, and no tourists pass, and—” "Ah, we manage to be comfortable even in the winter, and without the tourists." Then she glanced around the room with a blushing satisfaction, and sure enough it was an abode where happiness might well nestle. Everything was neat and in order, albeit on a washing-day; the tall mahogany clock told true time; the shelves were fairly set with books; and in the cupboard was some blue china which tempted one to covet. "What do you do on Sundays?" "Go to church at Satterthwaite." "Oh, I didn't mean that; I meant his preaching is that good? is he eloquent, interesting, talented?" It was but too plain that on this young life had never before been pressed the idea of distinguishing between parson and parson. The arrival of the elderly dame from the tower saved her the necessity of entering upon a criticism of the Satterthwaite clergyman. We went off with a pleasant feeling of having interviewed one of those pretty wild flowers of which Wordsworth made so much, and of which there is reason to suspect he sometimes made flowers much more simple and lowly than the originals before they were subjected to his poeticulture. An example of this may be cited from the "Excursion." One of the sweetest pictures of humble idyllic life in that poem relates to Jonathan and Betty Yewdale, who lived at Little Langdale. Some readers of that passage may suppose that Yewdale is a fancy name, since a beautiful vale near this is so called from its venerable yew-tree, popularly believed to be coeval with the Deluge. But the Yewdales were real people. Wordsworth was lost and benighted in that region, and the only guidance he found was a single light. It seemed to him too high to proceed from a human habitation, yet he climbed toward it and found a cottage. The wife had set the light to guide her husband. He was hospitably welcomed. The husband when he arrived impressed the poet by his manners—“ so graceful in his gentleness" and he thought he must be descended from some illustrious race. ty's account of their life must be quoted at length: Bet "Three dark midwinter months Pass,' said the matron, and I never see, bread Save when the Sabbath brings its kind release, On creature less intelligent and shrewd. Very charming. But some years ago Mr. Gibson, F.S.A., being in the neighborhood, made some inquiries about Jonathan and Betty, and found the latter to be a heroine of a very different kind from what he had gathered from the poet's page. The most vivid reminiscence was given him by an old lady of how Jonathan was brought back home by his wife from a funeral fray" or festivity at Coniston, where he had remained all night. "Off she set i't' rooad till Cunniston. On i't' efterneeun she co' back, driving Jonathan afooer her wi' a lang hezle stick-an' he sartly was a sairy object. His Sunda' cleeas leeuk't as if he'd been sleepin' i' them on t' top of a durty fluer." Passing over the further graphic description of Jonathan's sorry appearance, crowned with a hat which "hed gitten bulged in at t' side," and also Betty's account of how she had made the funeral meats fly when she found the carousers, I must quote the conclusion of the story. "Dud iver yè see sike a pictur? Why, nay! nit sa offen, indeed,' says I. 'Well,' says Betty, 'as I wodn't be seen i' t' rooads wi' him, we hed to teeak t' fields for't, an', as it wosn't seeaf ut let him climm t' wo's, I meead him creep t' hog-holes; an' when I gat him in an' his legs out, I did switch him.'" ing on an ancient farm and homestead over against the northward water, with which is associated one of the weird legends of this region. Calgarth is the name of it, and it is not picturesque enough for the guide-books to do more than mention it. Miss Martineau praises the owner for leaving depressions in his walls in order that travellers may look across his estate to the scenery beyond, and mentions that the arms of the Phillipsons are still there in the kitchen, carved amid a profusion of arabesque devices over the ample fire-place. But none of our professional guides appear to have got hold of the story of the place as it is known to the more aged peasants. It runs that Calgarth (which seems to be from O. N. kálgarde, a vegetable garden) was a bit of ground owned by a humble farmer named Kraster Cook and his good wife Dorothy. But their little inheritance was coveted by the chief aristocrat and magistrate of the neighborhood, Myles Phillipson. The Phillipsons were a great and wealthy family, but they could not induce Kraster and Dorothy to sell them this piece of ground to complete their estate. Myles Phillipson swore he'd have that ground, be they "live or deead;" but as time went on he appeared to be more gracious, and once he gave a great Christmas As we gained the height beyond Bow- banquet to the neighbors, to which Krasness, on the road to Ambleside, we paused ter and Dorothy were invited. It was a for some time; and while my comrade the dear feast for them. Phillipson pretendartist-I will call him the Abbé, though ed they had stolen a silver cup, and sure he is not in the least sacerdotal-passes enough it was found in Kraster's housean hour of ecstasy over the southward a "plant," of course. The offense was view of Windermere, my eyes were dwell- then capital; and as Phillipson was the |