star.'

I will mention for the sake of the friend who is writing down these
Notes that it was among the fine Scotch firs near Ambleside, and
particularly those near Green Bank, that I have over and over again
paused at the sight of this image. Long may they stand to afford a like
gratification to others! This wish is not uncalled for--several of their
brethren having already disappeared.

N.B. The Poem of St. Bees to follow at this place.

395. _St. Bees and Charlotte Smith_. [XI.]

St. Bees' Heads, anciently called the Cliff of Baruth, are a conspicuous
sea-mark for all vessels sailing in the N.E. parts of the Irish Sea. In
a bay, one side of which is formed by the southern headland, stands the
village of St. Bees; a place distinguished, from very early times, for
its religious and scholastic foundations.

'St. Bees,' say Nicholson and Burns, 'had its name from Bega, an holy
woman from Ireland, who is said to have founded here, about the year of
our Lord 650, a small monastery, where afterwards a church was built in
memory of her.

'The aforesaid religious house, being destroyed by the Danes, was
restored by William de Meschiens, son of Ranulph, and brother of Ranulph
de Meschiens, first Earl of Cumberland after the Conquest; and made a
cell of a prior and six Benedictine monks to the Abbey of St. Mary at
York.'

Several traditions of miracles, connected with the foundation of the
first of these religious houses, survive among the people of the
neighbourhood; one of which is alluded to in these Stanzas; and another,
of a somewhat bolder and more peculiar character, has furnished the
subject of a spirited poem by the Rev. R. Parkinson, M.A., late Divinity
Lecturer of St. Bees' College, and now Fellow of the Collegiate Church
of Manchester.

After the dissolution of the monasteries, Archbishop Grindal founded a
free school at St. Bees, from which the counties of Cumberland and
Westmoreland have derived great benefit; and recently, under the
patronage of the Earl of Lonsdale, a college has been established there
for the education of ministers for the English Church. The old
Conventual Church has been repaired under the superintendence of the
Rev. Dr. Ainger, the Head of the College; and is well worthy of being
visited by any strangers who might be led to the neighbourhood of this
celebrated spot.

The form of stanza in this Poem, and something in the style of
versification, are adopted from the 'St. Monica,'