Month, 1st, 1851.

MY DEAR L.:--

* * * We had a lovely ride and ferrying over Windermere
to Colthouse meeting on First-day. * * *
I am almost well, and able to enter into these beauties.
Will you be satisfied with seven sketches, such as they
are, for this day?

I thought, as we passed Doves' Nest, and read in the
guide-book F. Hemans's description of her dwelling
there for twelve months, and how many sad hearts,
beside hers, had come thither for a refuge from sorrow,
what cause we had to be thankful for (so far) another
lot; and yet, dear L., with all I see around me, my
heart is very often with you, and turns

From glassy lakes, and mountains grand,
And green reposeful isles,
To that one corner of the land
Beyond the rest that smiles.

Beyond the rest it smiles for me,
Thither my thoughts will roam--
The home beloved of infancy,
My childhood's precious home!

And yet somehow it is not with a reproachful smile that
it looks on me, nor with a regretful heart that I think
upon it. It is delightful to think of dear father and
mother's coming to Birmingham so soon, and of meeting
R. this day fortnight.

To her Mother.

GRASMERE, 3d of 9th Month, 1851.

MY DEAR MOTHER:--

We have had a lovely day, and I scarcely
know where or how to begin the tale of beauty. If
there be any shadow of truth in the notion that "a
thing of beauty is a joy forever," we must have been
laying in a store of delight which may cheer many a
busy and many a lonely hour. Truly, as we have gazed
upon the glorious mountains; looked down from the
summit of Silver How, on the green vale of Grasmere,
and the far-off Windermere; looked with almost awful
feelings on the black shadowy rocks that encompass Easdale
Tarn, (all that yesterday,) and to-day, passed from
waterfall to waterfall, through the solemn and desolate
Langdales, under the twin mountain _Pikes_, "throned
among the hills," dived into the awful recess of Dungeon
Ghyll, where the rock, with scarcely a crack to
part it, stands high on each side of the foaming torrent,
which dashes perpendicularly down the gorge, then out
upon the sunny vale, and home through the brotherhood
of mountains to our quiet dwelling of Grasmere; surely
all this, and much, much more, has made the days very
precious for present enjoyment and for future recollections.
The moon is bright as ever