rounding trees, is as beautiful an object as any in a landscape Befides, beauty is of many kinds, and one of them confifts exprefsly in regularity; for though a street of houfes, every one of which refembles another, is no very ftriking fcene; yet houfes, fome old, fome new, fome lofty, and fome low, all ftanding together, gives us an idea of nothing but the most un pleafing confufion."

This difficulty may be easily fettled: the one exprefsly confidered picturesque beauty; the other measured by his rule: the one contemplated the scene at a distance, the other had fed on delicious fruit gathered in that (Mr. English's) island.’→ As vifitors only, we thought with Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Weft: as refidents, we should join with Mr. Clarke. Mr. Gray's timidity is represented in a ludicrous light; but it is unpleafing to laugh even at the foibles of thofe whom in other views we have refpected: fuch foibles have, at times, made abilities, learning, and even virtue, ridiculous."

As we have now introduced Mr. Clarke to the reader's notice, for it was neceffary to make him the commentary on fome parts of his own work, we fhall confider his Survey' more regularly. The introduction contains feveral valuable remarks, thrown together without any regularity, as a comment on some defultory propofitions, remotely connected with the prefent work. We fhall felect fome paffages of the most interesting parts.

When Mr. Clarke speaks of the trifles which have at different times occafioned the most important events, he attributes the excellence of the English bowmen to the rigour of the gamelaws enacted by the Norman William, which introduced poaching, and occafioned numerous outlaws. Robin Hood and his followers were of this class; and it appears from other parts of this work, that an arrow from the bow of an expert Englishman, was as unerring as a ball from a rifle barrel. The North was the nursery of rebellion, and brought forward, on the fide often of the difaffected, its hardy veterans, trained in the fevere school of the border contefts. The reftlefs uncertain ftate of the life of a borderer is described at great length, fupported by numerous and often uncommon facts. This part of our author's introduction is very entertaining, and so far as relates to the Cumri, not very different from Mr. Pinkerton's system.

The customs of the North are very peculiar, and many of thefe are enumerated and explained. In some districts of this country, literature was not very long ago' at fo low an ebb, that the poor rates were collected by means of a notched stick, the old taille, from whence is derived our word tally, as each party had a tick of this kind. This ftick is ftill preferved, and fome perfons now alive can read it with cafe. We meet with

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fome novelty in Mr. Clarke's obfervations on the dialects of Cumberland and Westmoreland; but he might perhaps have rendered this part more interefting. With a few exceptions, and those chiefly relating to visible objects, the words are Gothic, though the district belonged to the Cumri. The following remarks on the relics found in this country, display no fmall fhare of judgment and fagacity.

The monuments of the Romans which have been found in Cumberland fhew, that far from impofing their own divinities upon the nations, they even acquiefced in the belief of thofe whom they vanquished, and erected altars to the gods of the parts where they refided. In later times things were altered, and the characteristic monuments are thofe of barbarism, cruelty, and bloodshed. Whatever courage continual danger may give to the human mind, it cannot be favourable, on several accounts, to improvements or changes either in religion or manners under its impreffions there is hardly leifure to think of innovations; it introduces moreover a fuperftitious dread, which will not eafily permit men to be bold in fpeculation, or dare to annul at once the authority of thofe gods whom they have been taught to confider as their protectors. Such a life leaves us room for the ideas of improved fociety, nor will it permit the niceties of learning to grow upon the rudeness of antiquated fuperftition. Whilft it prevents study and refinement at home, it alfo repels the means of them from abroad; by threatening their teachers with the fame, or, as was often the cafe, with 'greater perils. Such, I apprehend, is the principal cause of the numerous veftiges of ancient manners to be found in the borders.'

The account of the foil and weather of these parts gives no very accurate information: the foil, though reprefented as unfavourable, for timber, is, in Mr. Clarke's opinion, very different; and the withe, the wild-afh, the afpen, and the birch, grow as rapidly as the various impediments will admit. The country was once a foreft, and it has a tendency ftill to become one, if left without molestation. Different parts are not favourable, at this time, to the growth of trees, on account of an adventitious fubftance, the peat-mofs; but in these moffes, and below them, there are marks of the ground having formerly fupported large flourishing trees. The ground was disforested on different occafions, to discover the retreat of outlaws, to carry on wars in the more modern and improved fyftem of tactics, but chiefly for the fake of that cultivation which a more numerous population required: this deftructive, though necessary work, was began by the Romans. The winds, which in mountainous countries appear always peculiar, are next explained. These are the bottom wind, or that which, in the calmeft days, will occafionally agitate the lakes, arifing from

the bottom, and evidently confifting of fubterraneous exhalations; the bofom wind,' where any thing breaks the current of the air, that would otherwife impinge on an object beyond it: this occafions an accumulation of air above, and its confequent beating down at fome diftance from the object on which the wind impinges. The helme wind is more intricate, and less eafily explained. On a high ridge of mountains in Cumberland, the winds blow often in oppofite currents; the vapours of the Atlantic and of the German ocean paling on different fides. By these contrasted powers the air brought from the fouth, cooled from the difference of climate, is for a time fupported, till it has accumulated so much as to be fuperior in force to these opposing winds, when it bursts with great violence, and blows till the equilibrium is restored. At least this appears to be our author's explanation, which, in his language, is not very clear.

Mr. Clarke feems to have begun his furvey nearly at the northern angle of Westmoreland, almoft oppofite to Penrith, and, after mentioning fome circumftances chiefly of local curioty, he croffes Emont bridge, which divides Cumberland from Weftmoreland, and, in his way to Penrith, notices Carlton-hall,, mentioning fome facts relating to this family. Penrith is the next object of his defcription, and his account is full, clear, and fatisfactory. Mr. Clarke then proceeds to Ullfwater, the first lake in Cumberland, and defcribes particularly the different towns and other objects in its way. Patterdale, one of thefe, is a parish worth only twenty-four pounds annually, and yet the father of the clergman's wife boafted that his daughters were married to the two beft men of the dale, the priest and the bagpiper.' We suppose the honeft farmer meant moral goodness rather than riches, though the parfon is said to have died worth more than all his income put together at compound interest. The dale was, however, the feat of fufficient plenty and riches, till the. miners brought vice and immorality, leaving, when the lead ore was exhausted, their pernicious examples, the deluded females and their miserable wives. Mining brings on every country only the femblance of profperity, and, in reality, poverty, difease, and wickednefs. The beauties of the lake are, in our author's defcriptions, contrafted with the fimplicity of the inhabitants: inftances of either are too long for an extract.

Our furveyor returns to Penrith, and proceeds to Kefwick: in the way is Stainton, a fingle house, where eight years fince the mafter was eighty-fix years of age, the mistress eighty-five, a female fervant feventy-nine, a horfe thirty-three, a dog seventeen. The fervant left him at near eighty-fix, after having ferved him fixty-four years, though, after the first four years of her fervice, he had every half year given him notice that she would leave his houfe: fhe died two months after her final notice.

This venerable villager is remarkably ftrong built and boney, and has always enjoyed fo good a itate of health, that he never paid any thing to either furgeon or phyfician: he is, farther remarkable for his pacific difpofition; never having paid, or caufed any one to pay any thing for law. Though naturally filent and diffident, he is, to this day, an eminent promoter of mirth; and will take his glafs regularly among chearful company till a moderate hour, when he always retires. He never wore a coat, or any other article of drefs, which was not fpun in his own family, and the cloth manufactured by a neighbour, or what is here called Skiddow-green, viz. black and white wool mixed. His wife was every way his counterpart; and he has a brother now alive who is clerk at the parish church of Greystock, and is only two years younger than himself.'

At Stone Carr, near Greyftock, in this neighbourhood, are annual games, as wrestling, leaping, tracing with dogs, &c. and, on this occafion, we are introduced to a provincial poet, Mr. Relph, whofe lines in the dialect of Cumberland are truly paftoral and Doric. The author of the ironical comparison of Mr. Pope's and Mr. Phillip's paftorals, in the Guardian, need not have framed an imaginary example of this humble kind of strain, if he had known of Mr. Relph's work, or if it then had exifted, for it is very nearly what the Somersetshire paftoral might have been.

Our author's account of Saddleback, a fingular mountain in Cumberland, is taken from Mr. Crofsfield's defcription: Mr. Gray, it is obferved, vifited it blindfold, as he did many other fcenes of awful grandeur: in reality, Mr. Gray's timidity blinded him on many occafions, thinking, like other cowards, that the danger he did not fee no longer exifted. Threlheld Tairn is a lake near the top of the mountain, which Mr. Crofsfield first fuppofed might be formed from the frequent bursting of wa-' ter-fpouts on the fummit. This caufe was, however, at last confidered as unequal to the effect, and as many substances, apparently volcanic, occurred in the valley below, he at last attributed it to fire. At the top of Souther-fell, the first landing-place in the afcent, he found the ground compofed of loofe fragments of stone, intermixed with detached lumps of quartz, and killas. Scales-fell, one of those hideous chafms which furrow the fouthern face of the mountain,' is 200 yards wide, and 600 deep. At the brink of the gulfs, a point of the mountain juts out like the angle of a bastion between two of these horrid abyffes, while on each fide gulfs of the fame width, and 800 yards deep, prefented a horrible afpect. The rock was pointed, bare, and wholly without vegetation. Our traveller then afcended the higher points, and faw the Tairn under him."

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It is an oval piece of water, 200 yards from east to west, and 150 from north to fouth: when he reached it; he found it furrounded with rocks, and vaft maffes feemed detached, evidently, he thinks, by some violent convulfion. The ftones too had obvious marks of having been burnt, and he concludes the Tairn to have been the crater of a volcano. We confess that the description prefents to our minds a very different conclufion it feems to have none of the marks of a volcanic mountain. Some of the minerals he sent to Dr. Black, and we shall add his remarks, with the author's obfervations.

That gentleman (after expreffing his thanks in those terms of politenefs which he ufes to every one who wishes to promote knowledge), objected to me, that fome of the fpecimens I fent him did not feem to have fuch evident marks of combustion as he thought fatisfactory, particularly fome taken from the brinks of the rivulet and Tairn, as they contained fmall worn pebbles connected together by a cement, which confifted of different earths united with iron and black lead. However, not long after, I met with a circumftance which feems to me clearly to account for this, and which I immediately communicated to the illuftrious profeffor. I was going to wards Keswick, and, according to my cuftom, examining the edges of the waters, when I arrived at a place where there had been formerly a fielt-mill; here I found the flags totally deftroyed by time and the action of the water, and the pebbles clotted toge ther by the folution into a mass exactly refembling that I found on the mountain. Now the fituation of the Tairn is fuch as excludes even the poffibility of a work having ever been carried on there as fuch, I think not a doubt can remain that this mountain has been formerly a volcano.'

The defcription of the lake is in the cooler plainer ftyle of an author who wishes not to elevate and surprise at the expence of truth; but these lakes have been so often described, and it is fo difficult to give even a faint idea, by an abstract of what the fulleft description fails to convey with force and clearness, that we fhall not attempt to follow our author's narrative. Mr. Ware's account of the regatta, in 1784, is fabjoined; and it feems to have been a spectacle equally beautiful and brilliant : yet not to leave our readers wholly without a specimen of Mr. Clarke's defcriptive powers, we shall transcribe his early walk to Skiddow. It describes a phenomenon that we have more than once feen in mountainous countries.

• About half way up the mountain, or not quite fo high, you will be above the mift, which lies thick and white bel It is quite level, and appears fo ftrong that you might walk upon it; I can compare it to nothing fo much as a vast sheet of ice covered with fnow; not a house or a tree can be feen; the VOL. LXX. Sept. 1790. voice

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