ing all huddled together, as you think, in
unintelligible confusion; whereas they are all precisely what and where
they ought to be, and have had their colours painted, forms shaped, and
places allotted by wind and weather, and the perpetually but pleasantly
felt necessities Of the natural condition of mountaineers.

Dear, dear is the thatch to the eyes of a son of Caledonia, for he may
remember the house in which he was born; but what thatch was ever so
beautiful as that slate from the quarry of the White-moss? Each
one--no--not each one--but almost each one--of these little overhanging
roofs seems to have been slated, or repaired at least, in its own
separate season, so various is the lustre of lichens that bathes the
whole, as richly as ever rock was bathed fronting the sun on the
mountain's brow. Here and there is seen some small window, before
unobserved, curtained perhaps--for the statesman, and the statesman's
wife, and the statesman's daughters, have a taste--a taste inspired by
domestic happiness, which, seeking simply comfort, unconsciously creates
beauty, and whatever its homely hand touches, that it adorns. There
would seem to be many fireplaces in Braithwaite-fold, from such a number
of chimney-pillars, each rising up to a different altitude from a
different base, round as the bole of a tree--and elegant, as if shaped
by Vitruvius. To us, we confess, there is nothing offensive in the most
glaring white rough-cast that ever changed a cottage into a patch of
sunny snow. Yet here that greyish-tempered unobtrusive hue does
certainly blend to perfection with roof, rock, and sky. Every instrument
is in tune. Not even in sylvan glade, nor among the mountain rocks, did
wanderer's eyes ever behold a porch of meeting tree-stems, or reclining
cliffs, more gracefully festooned than the porch from which now issues
one of the fairest of Westmeria's daughters. With one arm crossed before
her eyes in a sudden burst of sunshine, with the other Ellinor Inman
waves to her little brother and sisters among the bark-peelers in the
Rydal woods. The graceful signal is repeated till seen, and in a few
minutes a boat steals twinkling from the opposite side of the lake, each
tug of the youthful rowers distinctly heard through the hollow of the
vale. A singing voice rises and ceases--as if the singer were watching
the echo--and is not now the picture complete?

After a time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more than
o