embankment, which divides the low-lying plain from the sea. The house stands among slips of orderly garden and plantation, with poultry yards and outhouses at the north-east end. The green country, sparely sprinkled with white farmhouses and cottages, spreads out in front, far and wide, to where the heathery fells of Lancashire bound the eastward view. The scene is as quiet as a country church just before service begins, except where the sails of a windmill are whirling in the wind, or the fleecy steam-cloud of a distant train gushes across the landscape, like a flying fountain of snow. On a knoll behind the house there is

a little rich orchard, trimly hemmed in by thick thorn hedges. In March I found its shadeless walks open to the cold sky, and all its holiday glory still brooding patiently down in the soil; but I remember how oft, in summer, when the boughs were bending to the ground with fruit, and the leaves were so thick overhead, that the sunshine could only find its way through chinks of the green ceiling, we have pushed the branches aside, and walked and talked among its bowery shades; or, sitting on benches at the edge of the fish-pond, have read and watched our floats, and hearkened the birds, until we have risen, as if drawn by some fascination in the air, and gone unconciously towards the sea again. There we have spent many a glorious hour; and there, at certain times of the day, we should meet with "Quick," or "Mitch," or some other coast-guardsmen belonging to the gunboat's crew at Fleetwood, pacing to and fro, on the look-out for Frenchmen, smugglers, and wreck. As we returned from the shore one afternoon last March, an old man was walking on the road before us, carrying what looked in the distance like two milk pails. These he set down now and then, and looked all round. My friend told me that this part of the Fylde was famous for singing-birds, especially larks. He said that bird-catchers came from all parts of Lancashire, particularly Manchester, to ply their craft there; and he would venture a guess that the quaint figure before us was a Manchester bird-catcher, though it was rather early in the season. When we overtook the old man, who had set down his covered cages in a by-lane, we found that he was a bird-catcher, and from Manchester, too. I learnt, also, that it was not uncommon for a clever catcher to make a pound a day by his "calling."

The primitive little whitewashed parish church of Bispham was always an interesting object to me. It stands on a knoll,

about a quarter of a mile over the fields from Norbreck; and its foundation is of great antiquity. Its graveyard contains many interesting memorials, but none more solemnly eloquent than a certain row of green mounds covering the remains of the unknown drowned washed upon that coast from time to time. Several of these, which drifted ashore after the burning of the Ocean Monarch off the coast of Wales, in 1848, now lie mouldering together in this quiet country graveyard, all unknown, save a lady from Bury, in Lancashire, to whose memory a tombstone is erected here.

As the great tides declined, the weather began to be troubled with wintry fits; but when the day of my return came, it brought summer again. After dinner, at Bispham House, I went up with my friend to bid farewell to "Owd England" at Norbreck; and it was like parting with some quaint volume of forgotten lore. Nursed here in the lap of nature, the people and customs of the country were part of himself; and his native landscape, with all the shifting elements in the scene, was a kind of barometer, the slightest changes of which were intelligible to him. At the eastern edge of Norbreck, a low wall of coble stones encloses his garden. Here, where I have sometimes made a little havoc among his "Bergamots," "Old Keswicks," and "Scotch Bridgets," we walked about, whilst I took a parting look at the landscape. Immediately behind us the sea was singing its old song; and below lay the little rural parish, "where," as I heard the rector say in one of his sermons, "a man cannot walk into the open air but all his neighbours can see him." Beyond, the tranquil Fylde stretches out its drowsy green, now oblivious of all remembrance of piratical ravage, which so often swept over it in ancient times. Yonder, the shipping of Fleetwood is clearly in sight to the north. And there, a sunbeam, stealing between the fleecy clouds, glides across the land from field to field, with a kind of plaintive grace, as if looking for a lost garden. Over meadow, over wood, and little town it goes, dying away upon yon rolling hills in the east. The first of these hills is Longridge, and behind it, weird old Pendle, standing in a world of its own, is dimly visible. Northward, the hills roll on in bold relief, Parlick, and Bleasdale, and the fells between Morecambe and "time-honoured Lancaster." Still northward, to where yon proud brotherhood of snow-crowned giants-the mountains of Cumberland and Westmorland-look so glorious in the sunlight; awaking enchanting dreams of that land of romance, the "Lake

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District," hallowed by so many rich associations of genius. They toss their mighty heads on westward, till solemn old "Black Coombe" dips into the Irish Sea. Altogether a fine setting for the peaceful scene below.

The afternoon was waning, so, taking leave of the old fisherman and his household, I turned from Norbreck like a man who rises from his dinner before he is half satisfied. Accompanied by my friend, I walked four miles, on highways and by-ways, to meet the train at Poulton. The road was pleasant, and the day was fine; and I reached Manchester before midnight, feeling better in soul and body for my sojourn by the sea.

HERE is one feature of the distress in Lancashire which was very remarkable upon the streets of our large towns during the year 1862. I allude to the wandering minstrelsy of the unemployed. Swarms of strange, shy, sad-looking singers and instrumental performers, in the work-worn clothing of factory operatives, went about the city, pleading for help, in touching wails of simple song,like so many wild birds driven by hard weather to the haunts of man. There is something instructive, as well as affecting, in this feature of the troubled time. These wanderers are only a kind of representative overflow of a vast number whom our streets will never see. Any one well acquainted with Lancashire will know how wide-spread the study of music is among its working population. Even the inhabitants of our large towns know something more about this now than they knew a few months ago. I believe there is no part of England in which the practice of sacred music is so widely and lovingly pursued amongst the working people as in the counties of Lancashire and

Yorkshire. There is no part of England where, until lately, there have been so many poor men's pianos, which have been purchased by a long course of careful savings from the workman's wages. These, of course, have mostly been sold during the hard times, to keep life in the owner and his family. The great works of Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart, have solaced the toil of thousands of the poorest working people of Lancashire. Anybody accustomed to wander among the moorlands of the country will remember how common it is to hear the people practising sacred music in their lonely cottages. It is not uncommon to meet working men wandering over the wild hills, "where whin and heather grow," with their musical instruments, to take part in some village oratorio many miles away. "That reminds me," as tale-tellers say, of an incident among the hills, which was interesting, though far from singular in my experience. Up in the forest of Rosendale, between Derply Moor and the wild hill called Swinshaw, there is a lone valley,— a green cup in the mountains,-called "Dean." The inhabitants of this valley are so notable for their love of music, that they are known all through the vales of Rossendale as "Th' Deighn Layrocks," or "The Larks of Dean." In the twilight of a glorious Sunday evening, in the height of summer, I was roaming over the heathery waste of Swinshaw, towards Dean, in company with a musical friend of mine, who lived in the neighbouring clough, when we saw a little crowd of people coming down a moorland slope, far away in front of us. they drew nearer, we found that many of them had musical instruments; and when we met, my friend recognised them as working people living in the district, and mostly well known to him. He inquired where they had been; and when they told him that they had "bin to a bit of a sing deawn i'th Deighn," "Well," said he, "can't we have a tune here?" "Sure, yo con, wi' o' th' pleasur' i'th world," replied he who acted as spokesman; and a low buzz of delighted consent ran through the rest of the company. They then ranged themselves in a circle around their conductor, and they played and sang several fine pieces of psalmody, upon the heather-scented mountain top. As those solemn strains floated over the wild landscape, startling the moorfowl untimely in his nest, I could not help thinking of the hunted Covenanters of Scotland. The all-together of that scene upon

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