r
feature--and the stream here very commonplace. Put them not on paper.
Yet alive--is not the secluded scene felt to be most beautiful? It has a
soul. The pure spirit of the pastoral age is breathing here--in this
utter noiselessness there is the oblivion of all turmoil; and as the
bleating of flocks comes on the ear, along the fine air, from the green
pastures of the Kentmere range of soft undulating hills, the stilled
heart whispers to itself, "this is peace!"

The worst of it is, that of all the people that on earth do dwell, your
Troutbeck _statesmen_, we have heard, are the most litigious--the most
quarrelsome about straws. Not a footpath, in all the parish that has
not cost many pounds in lawsuits. The most insignificant style is
referred to a full bench of magistrates. That gate was carried to the
Quarter Sessions. No branch of a tree can shoot six inches over a
march-wall without being indicted for a trespass. And should a
frost-loosened stone tumble from some _skrees_ down upon a neighbour's
field, he will be served with a notice to quit before next morning. Many
of the small properties hereabouts have been mortgaged over head and
ears mainly to fee attorneys. Yet the last hoop of apples will go the
same road--and the statesman, driven at last from his paternal fields,
will sue for something or another _in forma pauperis_, were it but the
worthless wood and second-hand nails that may be destined for his
coffin. This is a pretty picture of pastoral life--but we must take
pastoral life as we find it. Nor have we any doubt that things were
every whit as bad in the time of the patriarchs--else--whence the
satirical sneer, "sham Abraham?" Yonder is the village straggling away
up along the hill-side, till the furthest house seems a rock fallen with
trees from the mountain. The cottages stand for the most part in
clusters of twos or threes--with here and there what in Scotland we
should call a _clachan_--many a sma' toun within the ae lang toun; but
where in all braid Scotland is a mile-long scattered congregation of
rural dwellings, all dropt down where the Painter and the Poet would
have wished to plant them, on knolls and in dells, and on banks and
braes, and below tree-crested rocks, and all bound together in
picturesque confusion by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamore, and by
flower-gardens and fruit-orchards, rich as those of the Hesperides?

If you have no objections--our pretty dears--we shall return to Bown