o.]

[Footnote 72: I have been greatly disappointed, in taking soundings of
our most majestic mountain pools, to find them, in no case, verge on the
unfathomable.]

FICTION, FAIR AND FOUL.

III.[73]

[BYRON]

"Parching summer hath no warrant
To consume this crystal well;
Rains, that make each brook a torrent,
Neither sully it, nor swell."

53. So was it year by year, among the unthought-of hills. Little Duddon
and child Rotha ran clear and glad; and laughed from ledge to pool, and
opened from pool to mere, translucent, through endless days of peace.

But eastward, between her orchard plains, Loire locked her embracing
dead in silent sands; dark with blood rolled Iser; glacial-pale,
Beresina-Lethe, by whose shore the weary hearts forgot their people, and
their father's house.

Nor unsullied, Tiber; nor unswoln, Arno and Aufidus; and Euroclydon high
on Helle's wave; meantime, let our happy piety glorify the garden rocks
with snowdrop circlet, and breathe the spirit of Paradise, where life is
wise and innocent.

Maps many have we, nowadays clear in display of earth constituent, air
current, and ocean tide. Shall we ever engrave the map of meaner
research, whose shadings shall content themselves in the task of showing
the depth, or drought,--the calm, or trouble, of Human Compassion?

54. For this is indeed all that is noble in the life of Man, and the
source of all that is noble in the speech of Man. Had it narrowed itself
then, in those days, out of all the world, into this peninsula between
Cockermouth and Shap?

Not altogether so; but indeed the _Vocal_ piety seemed conclusively to
have retired (or excursed?) into that mossy hermitage, above Little
Langdale. The _Un_vocal piety, with the uncomplaining sorrow, of Man,
may have a somewhat wider range, for aught we know: but history
disregards those items; and of firmly proclaimed and sweetly canorous
religion, there really seemed at that juncture none to be reckoned upon,
east of Ingleborough, or north of Criffel. Only under Furness Fells, or
by Bolton Priory, it seems we can still write Ecclesiastical Sonnets,
stanzas on the force of Prayer, Odes to Duty, and complimentary
addresses to the Deity upon His endurance for adoration. Far otherwise,
over yonder, by Spezzia Bay, and Ravenna Pineta, and in ravines of
Hartz. There, the softest voices speak the wildest words; and Keats
discourses of Endymion, Shelley of Demogorgon, Goethe of Luc