trees; there the river Wharf, fending up a mufical but melancholy found, a slender waterfall thrown from a purple heathery height just beyond, with the picturesque old parfonage and other houses lying amongst their trees, and beyond, the wooded valley stretching away amid rocks and foreft hills, and the old tower of Barden closing the distant scene. What a beau ideal of a rural parsonage was that, with its old ivied porch, and, above it, its ancient escutcheon on its little tower, its garden and shrubberies! There then lived the venerable Mr. Carr, the rector, who loved the place like a poet, and had done so much to open up its beauties to the feet and the eyes of strangers. He it was who had constructed the little chapel in the centre of the trees.

In the shattered fabric's heart
Remaineth one protected part—
A rural chapel, neatly drest,

In covert like a little neft;

And thither young and old repair

On Sabbath-day, for praise and prayer.

The White Doe of Rylfton.

What a day was that. Wordsworth and Whitaker had gone before us, and all the valley and the hills and the air were full of the memories of people and events that made the whole facred ground. There ftood the tower of Richard Moon, the laft prior, who was eclipfed by the burly fhadow of bluff Harry, and left his work unfinished. There it ftands, with its fine receding arch embellished with shields and ftatues, and its grand perpendicular window ftands like a fcreen at the western entrance. Opposite is seen the fmall shooting-lodge of the Duke of Devonshire, to whom this property has descended from the Cliffords, and which has been conftructed out of the ancient gateway of the priory.

Croffing the river by large solid stepping-stones, we made

our way up that most enchanting valley, the charms of which have for years drawn thousands of vifitors, and fince the day of railroads hundreds of thousands. Through woodland fhades, through wildernesses of rock and heather, and ferns and moffes, and ever and anon coming to a fine view of the dark rapid stream below us, or the airy hills around, we made our way to the famous STRID.

The reader is familiar with the ftory of the young lord of Egremont, who ranging the woods of Bolton, with his greyhounds and huntsmen, and coming to the narrow paffage where the river pent up rages through in fury, leaped, but having a greyhound in a leash, and she a puppy at her heels, the dog hung back, and he was plucked backward, fell in and perished. Both Rogers and Wordfworth have celebrated this legend :--

The pair hath reached that fearful chasm

How tempting to bestride!

For lordly Wharf is there pent in

With rocks on either fide.

This ftriding-place is called the STRID

A name it took of yore;

A thousand years it hath borne that name,
And fhall a thousand more.

And hither is young Romilly come;

And what may now forbid,

That he, perhaps for the hundredth time,

Shall bound across the Strid.

He fprung in glee, for what cared he

That the river was ftrong and the rocks were steep?

But the greyhound in the leafh hung back,

And checked him in his leap.

The boy is in the arms of Wharf,

And strangled by a merciless force;

For never more was young Romilly seen,

Till he rofe a lifeless corfe.

The Force of Prayer.-WORDSWorth.

t

THE STRID.

When the huntsman stood before Lady Alice, his mother, he asked her "What is good for a bootlefs beane?” (What avails when prayer is useless?) And the mother, instinctively reading his woe-ftruck countenance, replied, "Endless forrow!" And on hearing the fatal truth she became the second foundress of Bolton, saying, "Many a poor man shall be my heir."

When Lady Aäliza mourned

Her fon, and felt in her despair
The pang of unavailing prayer;

Her fon in Wharf's abyffes drowned,

The noble boy of Egremond;

From which affliction when the grace

Of God had in her heart found place—

A pious structure fair to see,

Rofe up, this stately priory!

с

There have been attempts to overthrow this beautiful tradition, by fhowing that when Lady Alice gave her manor of Bolton to the canons, her fon William was, according to a pedigree exhibited in parliament in 1315, fet down as her only son, and as a party with her to the contract. But we prefer to confider this as relating to the first foundress, giving more faith to a tradition which has clung to the spot for seven centuries, than to a pedigree exhibited nearly two hundred years after.

Croffing a fine bridge to Barden, we ftood before the old tower of the Cliffords. It is a ruin. "The shattered remains of Barden Tower," fays Whitaker, "stand shrouded in ancient woods, and backed by the purple distance of the highest fells. An antiquarian eye refts with pleasure on a view of thatched houses and barns, which in the last two centuries have undergone as little change as the fimple and paftoral manners of the inhabitants." So they remained at that moment, yet hence in ages paft iffued,

The ftout Lord Cliffords that did fight in France

that fought in all the wars of England from the Conqueror to Cromwell. Hence defcended the famous Countess of Derby, granddaughter of Henry Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and the fifter of Henry VIII., Queen Dowager of France. Hence Ann Clifford, the renowned Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, who lived from the days of Queen Elizabeth to those of Charles II., who found fix ruined castles on her estates on coming into poffeffion of them, and rebuilt them all, including this tower, of which an inscription in front of it bears teftimony. Her reply to the agent of Charles II., who prefumed to dictate a candidate for the borough of Appleby, deserves to live for

ever:

"I have been bullied by a ufurper; I have been neglected by

a court; but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man fhan't ftand.

"ANNE, DORSETT, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY."

But no ancestral spot bears a more fingular record than that of the Shepherd Lord. This was the fon of Lord John Clifford, called the bloody or black-faced Clifford, who fell at the battle of Towton. His mother was obliged to fly and hide him, a mere child, from the vengeance of Edward IV., and bring him up as a fhepherd in the wildeft receffes of Yorkshire and Cumberland. Growing up in this condition to man's estate, when the attainder was reverfed by Henry VII., he came and settled here, to be near the monks of Bolton, by whom his neglected education was repaired. With them he contracted a great friendship, and ftudied with them aftronomy, and, no doubt, aftrology as well as alchemy. The people believed strange things of him.

He knew the rocks which angels haunt

On the mountains vifitant.

He hath kenned them taking wing:

And the caves where fairies fing

He hath entered; and been told

By voices how men lived of old.

Among the heavens his eye can see
Face of thing that is to be;

And if men report him right,

He could whisper words of might.

WORDSWORTH.

Writings preserved in the archives of the Cliffords, writings attributed to him, fay as much, and hint at mysteries that cannot be spoken, such as the secret of gold-making.

Hie wer accurfyde that foo wolde done

How schold yow have fervans then,

To tyll your lands, and dryffe your plughe?

Yff ev'ry mane to ryches came,

Then none for oth'r owght wolde dowghe.