bugle-horn, a flourish of trumpets from the barracks, the whistling of carters, the rumbling of carriages, the ringing of anvils, the reverberating thumps of tilthammers-with an indistinct, but deep, perpetual, under-sound, like a running bass, composed of all those blended noises, covering the whole, and constituting the busy hum of men' thronging the streets of the town below, or travelling on the numerous high roads branching from it. These would form altogether a concert inexpressibly captivating, by the associations which they would awaken in the mind of him who could listen to them as one of the millions of sentient beings, whether brute or intelligent, that inhabit the little locality, exquisitely picturesque, and genuinely English, within the precincts of Sheffield. Though in solitude himself, his delight would not be solitary, but social in the highest and purest degree. Though not a living creature within the circuit of the horizon were thinking of him at that moment, he would be thinking of them, of them all, and all together. His joy would be a mysterious sympathy with all their joys, an ineffable interest in all their occupations, and a cordial good-will to every thing that lived, and moved, and breathed within his sensorium.”

A pleasant ride is it to Beauchief Abbey, by the Baslow and Bakewell road. A very few miles beyond Beauchief, and the traveller is in the solitudes of the Derbyshire moors, where

"all is sapphire light and gloomy land,
Blue, brilliant sky above a sable sea
Of hills."

We are pedestrians, and will stretch no further than Beauchief. The road is very beautiful on this grey spring morning. When we are fairly in the country, we rejoice in the green meadows and the thinly-clad hedges, where the hawthorn-flower is not yet disclosed. We are gradually approaching the wooded upland under which Beauchief Abbey is placed-the beau-chef, or beautiful head, as some topographers divine. There is the Abbey. At first it has a lumpish and somewhat ungainly look. The tower is stunted and robbed of its battlements and pinnacles. The ruin has been patched up into a church for modern times. All the old grandeur is departed; but the venerable and the beautiful still remain. How strenuously the ivy and the ash have seized upon the walls, to clothe them with loveliness, whilst they eat into their very substance. One by one the stones that have stood for six centuries are loosened by the parasite roots. But man destroys faster than the silent instruments which time employs for levelling the works of man with the dust. The Abbey flourished for three hundred years; in 1536 the last Abbot surrendered the house to the Crown. A century later the buildings were in ruin, and the adjoining Beauchief Hall was built in 1671, out of its fallen stones and timber. Mutilated as the Abbey is yet it is still picturesque. Those trees which mingle so gracefully with the little monastic relic, shall they prematurely perish? We shuddered to see a white circle_round each of their trunks. Chantrey, in the

'Peak Scenery ;' and Creswick, in this our unpretending 'Sketch-Book,' (Cut, No. 4,) have preserved their memories. If they should fall by the axe, a bitter and an angry lament will be heard in places far distant from the valley of the Sheaf.

As we

We ascend the hill which leads to Norton. look back upon the Abbey, its eastern end composes well with the surrounding landscape. Gradually the distance enlarges. Hills rise o'er hills; snug farms and trim cottages dot the road-side. We are at length at the commencement of the pretty village of Norton. Norton Hall is finely situated in a park commanding views of singular beauty. In a farm-house a little out of the village was Francis Chantrey born. The house was inhabited by the great sculptor's mother, who clung to the home where her husband died, and her child was born. Her celebrated son made the old house as comfortable as he could-but it was still a low-roofed tenement, with humble sheds and mean offices; yet commanding a wide expanse of prospecta healthful and a pleasant spot. Here grew the Sheffield milk-boy, who struggled with difficulties till he had made himself the most prosperous and famous of the artists of his age. His father, who here farmed a little land which he had inherited from respectable ancestors, sustained heavy losses; his little property melted away; he died in the prime of his years, broken in spirit, leaving a widow and one child, Francis, then about twelve years old. The mother was in straitened circumstances, but she persevered in the cultivation of her farm. The supply of milk to Sheffield was an important addition to her means. The great manufacturing town draws its milky tribute from every hill by which it is surrounded; and the legion of milk-boys who pour into her streets at morn and eve, with kegs and cans slung on the docile asses which they ride, form a peculiar feature in the picturesque of her highways. (Cut, No. 2) Elliott has described the inspiration of the milk-boy of Norton with some of those minute touches of observation which distinguish the true poet from the shallow generalizer :

"The worm came up to drink the welcome shower;
The red-breast quaff'd the rain-drop in the bower;
The flaskering duck through freshen'd lilies swam;
The bright reach took the fly below the dam;
Ramp'd the glad colt, and cropp'd the pensile spray;
No more in dust uprose the sultry way;
The lark was in the cloud; the woodbine hung
More sweetly o'er the chaffinch while he sung;
And the wild rose, from every dripping bush,
Beheld on silv'ry Sheaf the mirror'd blush:
When, calmly seated on his pannier'd ass,
Where travellers hear the steel hiss as they pass,
A milk-boy, shelt'ring from the transient storm,
Chalk'd on the grinder's wall an infant's form;
Young Chantrey smil'd; no critic prais'd or blam'd;
And golden promise smil'd, and thus exclaim'd,-
Go, child of genius; rich be thine increase,-
Go,-be the Phidias of the second Greece."

The young milk-boy who sketched on the grinder's wall was apprenticed to a carver and gilder in Sheffield. He thought such a trade was one of the portals of the fine arts. His master refused that he should pass the portal. At his few leisure hours the boy drew and modelled in a room which he hired weekly for a few

gleaming in the sun. At Wadsley we cross the Rivelin; a hundred yards onward and we cross the Loxley; and at a short distance below Wadsley the streams unite, before their junction with the Don. Of the scenery of the Rivelin we have given a slight notion, in the extract from 'The Two Grinders.' The Loxley flows by Loxley Chase, which is held to be the Locksley of the old ballads, where Robin Hood is said to have been born. Here may be seen 'Robin Hood's Well,' included within the romantic grounds called 'Little Matlock.' As we ascend the hill we have a fine view of the Don, losing itself in the valley in which Sheffield is built; and by and by the grand wooded summits of Wharncliffe continue to indicate the course of the river for several miles. We walk on to Worral upon an elevated table-land; and as we descend towards Oughty bridge we cross a considerable ravine by a small bridge, and hear the waterfall brawling many feet beneath us, whilst the tall tops of the ash which spring from the bed of the stream are level with the road. The cottages of these villages are the dwellings of cutlers and file-makers. Their communication with the town is carried on by boys on donkeys, who bring out the steel rods to be forged into tools, and carry back the blades, or the file, or the complete knife. These are a simple race; in morals far above the town dwellers. Their houses are models of cleanliness; and the stranger who asks to rest awhile is invited to share the crisp oat-cake. At Oughty bridge we cross the Don; and turning out of the turnpikeroad, we are soon within the precincts of Wharncliffe Chase.

We pass a lodge to the left, and ascend a gentle hill, thick with low trees and underwood. The road is soaked with the recent rains, and now and then a marshy place "craves wary walking." The hawthorns are scarcely in leaf; but the green sward is gay with the wood-anemone; and every now and then our eye is greeted with patches of the bilberry-unknown to our southern walks-whose branches of bright green are now sprinkled with the brilliant red blossom. It is the woodland favourite. We leave the wood and enter the Deer-Park-a wild and grand scene ;- -a plain covered here and there with large masses of gritstone rock like billows in a stormy sea- -(to borrow a thought from Elliot)—and amongst which old knobby hollies have grown for generations. We pass through this solemn region, where the deer only seem to belong to the beautiful; and we are at Wharncliffe Lodge, on the edge of the far-famed Crags. We step a few yards beyond the Lodge, anxious to gaze upon the opening distance. What a prospect! Its grandeur and loveliness, seen under such a sky as this May morning, when dark clouds flitting across the sapphire heaven, clothe every bill and every valley with a checquered shade, they sink deep into the heart. Well might Lady Mary Wortley Montague, write from Avignon, describing its position at the junction of the Rhone and Durance, "Last summer, in the hot evenings, I walked often thither, where I always

found a fresh breeze, and the most beautiful land prospect I ever saw, except Wharncliffe, being a view of the windings of two great rivers, and overlooking the whole country, with part of Languedoc and Provence." Come! let us leave off gazing at the wondrous landscape, and recollect something of the history of this spot.

Our old favourite, John Taylor, the Water-poet-he who made a ' Penniless Pilgrimage' into Scotland, and rode a hunting in the Highlands in days when Englishmen knew as little of them as of Timbuctoo-John Taylor came to Wharncliffe in 1639, and published a description of this Lodge in one of the rarest of his tracts; from which Mr. Hunter has copied the following passage:

"From Leeds I went to Wakefield, where, if the valiant Pinder had been living, I would have played Don Quixote's part, and challenged him; but being it was so happy that he was dead, I passed the town in peace to Barnsley, and so to Wortley, to Sir Francis Wortley's ancient house. The entertainment which himself, his good lady, and his most fair and hopeful daughter gave me there, as I never did or can deserve, so I never shall be able to requite. To talk of meat, drink, money, and free welcome for horse and man, it were but a mere fooling for me to begin, because then I should hardly find the way. Therefore, to his Worship my humble thanks remembered, and everlasting happiness wished both to him and all that is his; yet I cannot forbear to write a little of the farther favour of this Noble Knight. Upon the 14th of September afternoon, he took horse with me, and his lady and daughter in their coach, with some other servants on horseback: where three miles we rode over rocks and cloud-kissing mountains, one of them so high that in a clear day a man may from the top thereof see both the minsters or cathedral churches, York and Lincoln, near sixty miles off us; and it is to be supposed that when the Devil did look over Lincoln, as the proverb is, that he stood upon that mountain or near it. Sir Francis brought me to a lodge, the place is called Wharncliffe, where the keeper dwells who is his man, and keeps all this woody, rocky, stony, vast wilderness under him; for there are many deer there, and the keeper were an ass if he would want venison, having so good a master. Close to the said lodge is a stone, in burthen at least a hundred cart-loads; the top of it is four-square by nature, and about twelve yards compass. It hath three seats in the form of chairs, made by art as it were in the front of the rock, wherein three persons may easily sit, and have a view and goodly prospect over large woods, towns, corn-fields, fruitful and pleasant pastures, valleys, rivers, deer, neat, sheep, and all things needful for the life of man; contained in thousands of acres, and all, for the better part, belonging to that Noble Knight's ancestors and himself. Behind the stone is a large inscription engraven, where in an old character is described the ancient memory of the Wortleys, (the progenitors of Sir Francis now living) for some hundreds of years, who were lords and owners

But there is a hedge, just on the hill edge,
And Matthew's house hard by it;

O there and then was this dragon's den,
You could not chuse but spy it.
"Old stories tell how Hercules

A dragon slew at Lerna,

With seven heads, and fourteen eyes,

To see and well discern-a:
But he had a club, this dragon to drub,
Or he had ne'er done it, I warrant ye:

But More of More-Hall, with nothing at all,
He slew the drag on of Wantley."

"But first he went, new armour to

Bespeak at Sheffield town;

With spikes all about, not within but without,

Of steel so sharp and strong;

Both behind and before, arms, legs, and all o'er,

Some five or six inches long."

his "good red-deer pie," and quaffed his "nappy liquor," did the fearful beast curl his wicked tail, and glare upon virgins with his fiery eyes. The prospect must always have been fine enough to melt even a dragon's heart into some touch of humanity. He must have been gazing on it in poetical abstraction, when More of More Hall came suddenly upon his lair. To the west is a sea of wood, beneath which the Don glides. Glancing over pleasant hills, the dark moorlands of Yorkshire are in the distance. In the centre of the view is a wide valley, through which a little river threads; and two noble hills which front us boldly with their "barren breasts," stretch away into the southern distance, where they also melt into black moorlands.

"This dragon had two furious wings,

Each one upon each shoulder;

With a sting in his tail, as long as a flail,

Which made him bolder and bolder:

He had long claws, and in his jaws

Four and forty teeth of iron; With a hide as tough as any buff, Which did him round environ."

*

"Devoured he poor children three,

That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he ate them up, As one would eat an apple.

"All sorts of cattle this dragon did eat;

Some say he ate up trees;

And that the forests sure he would

Devour up by degrees.

For houses and churches were to him geese and turkeys; He ate all, and left none behind,

But some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack,

Which on the hill you will find."

Dr. Percy, in the 'Reliques,' acquiesces in the common account that "this ballad alludes to a contest at law between an overgrown Yorkshire attorney and a neighbouring gentleman. The former, it seems, had stript three orphans of their inheritance, and by his encroachments and rapaciousness was become a nuisance to the whole country; when the latter generously espoused the cause of the oppressed, and gained a complete victory over his antagonist, who with mere spite and vexation broke his heart."

It is wearisome to follow the conjectures upon conjectures of the origin of this ballad, or its precise date. Perhaps, after all, it was nothing more than a clever burlesque upon the old ballads and romances of chivalry; written in good humour over a social glass at 'More Hall,' a comfortable old house on the opposite bank under Wharncliffe. The whole thing looks to us wonderfully like a freak of clever Charles Cotton, come out of his sweet valley of the Dove to visit a brother angler of the Don. So there is another conjecture.

And now, thus refreshed with some antiquarianism that has a little fun in it, let us wend our way along the noble road to Wortley, carried through the woods under the brow of the craggy hill. But first let us pause to receive into our minds the complete splendour of the prospect from the highest brow of Wharncliffe Crags. We are just above the 'Dragon's Cave.' Then the Dragon has a traditional cave. In the "vault in the rock" where honest John Taylor discussed

and beautiful tract. Over all the immediate scene are scattered fine plantations of birch, and pine, and oak: and at this early season, with occasional sunlight dancing upon the young leaves of the birch, whilst the oak is bare, and the larch scarcely green, there is that delicacy of colour which the spring only can show, and which (its promise has something to do with the matter) imparts as deep a pleasure as the pomp of autumn. Now we proceed with our walk. We are some thirty or forty feet under the crest of the hill. We are amongst the Crags, piled up here from ages unnumbered. These masses of rock are clothed with living beauty. They are themselves storehouses of imperfect vegetation. Lichens, of many species, cover their smooth or angular surfaces, and produce that variety of colour which some have called 'time-stains.' Out of the interstices of these rocks spring tall treessome the growth of a generation, some that have wrestled with the wintry blast for two or three centuries. What a contrast to the belling of the hart is the whistle of the locomotive! We see not the train, but there is no other earthly noise like that whistle. Well! it disturbs us not. "Bubbling runnels join the sound." Their music is constant; the discord was but for a moment. The cuckoo's voice is heard, too, for the first time this year. Sit down and listen. And now for a stiff walk through twilight groves to Wortley village.

Prettily is that church of Wortley situate on the gentle hill. The foot-path through these green meadows is very pleasant. But the snug parlour of the 'Wortley Arms' inn is quite as agreeable, after a walk of six hours. We ever advise pedestrians to have a dinner in prospect at the end of a dozen miles. No makebelieves of sandwiches or biscuits will satisfy us. It is part of the poetry of the walk to dine, and to rest luxuriously after labour. "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Trouble not yourself about the fare to be found. There is always the best in a country hostel. Eggs and bacon-to name them is provocative of appetite. We dine at the Wortley Arms;' we return to Sheffield by the railroad at set of sun. We go not into the church, or rather chapel-of-ease. It is not inviting. It is the bald thing of beautification miscalled Gothic. We are too tired to look upon Wortley