or, better still, the pealing thunder, is carried from hill to hill as was this lady's laugh.

The road leads us on by Grasmere, which lies at the foot of Silver How. It is another lovely mere, larger than Rydal, set in a soft green vale, hemmed in by rugged mountains. The grave of Wordsworth is in the village churchyard. Under Helm Crag we go; the vale narrows; the mountains become steep and rugged, with streams of boulders down their slopes; and, presently, we are under "the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn."

II.

HELVELLYN.

Helvellyn is the monarch of the lake mountains: Sca Fell is a hundred feet higher; Skiddaw, Sca Fell, and Helvellyn are all over 3000 feet; but neither of the others is such a big, swelling, giant of a mountain as Helvellyn.

We are too close to the Monarch to see his crown: our road lies under his vast shoulder; but we cannot pass him by. We must leave our box-seat, and breast the hill, prepared for two or three hours' hard climbing.

The best way to see the mountain in its grandeur is to follow the track which leads up by the Red Tarn. A tarn is a small mere, or lake, high up among the mountains. This Red Tarn lies in a dip about 600 feet from the summit. It is shut in between two sloping walls of rock, the Striding Edge, and the Swirral Edge, -edges indeed, for they are simply steep, narrow, broken pathways on the top of each wall of rock. you are a good climber, and not apt to become giddy,

If

you may make your way up by one of these edges; but beware of a false step on either side of the narrow pathway; one such step, and you are plunged down a precipice of a hundred feet.

There is a touching tale of a traveller who attempted the passage on a snowy day and fell. Wordsworth tells the story in the poem beginning

“A barking sound the shepherd hears.”

On the summit of the mountain there is an awful stillness; not an insect hums in the air; we no longer hear the roar of the mountain torrents; not a blade of grass is to be seen; cushions, or tufts of moss, parched and brown, appear between the huge blocks and stones that lie in heaps on all sides; the snow lies here for half the year.

III.

DERWENT WATER.

Coming down from Helvellyn, we are again in a "smiling valley," with its beautiful lake-Thirlmere this time, from which it has been proposed to bring water to Manchester.

At the head of Thirlmere the road turns, and we get a peep down the sweet Vale of St. John's, watered by the Greta river. We round the fells on our left, and Derwent Water and Keswick town lie below; and, farther on, towering Skiddaw and Bassenthwaite Water.

Beautiful Derwent Water!—the fairest of all the lakes, many people think-with its green shores and