issuing from the moorland rocks, and no house at it, but those few huts near Ballater bridge, where Lords Panmure and Kennedy, and some of their jovial companions, notorious up here, used to come and to drink the waters, in order to remedy their drinking too much whisky. There was no carriage road then. There was no cultivated meadow. All was moorland, and woods, and wild mountains. There was a rude road at the margin of the river, but so stony that no carriage could exist upon it. Nay, the present farmer says, that when he came to live here, there was no road into this little hidden valley. There was no bridge over the brook, but they went through amid the great stones, and that without taking any trouble to put them aside. There was no garden, and there was no field. Around rose, as they do now, dark moorland mountains, and the little blackfaced sheep, and the black cattle roamed over the boggy, heathery, and birch scattered valley, as they do still, except within the little circle of cultivation that the present tenant has made.

What a place for a civilized woman and her only son! How he got so far around as he did is to me a miracle. He advanced up the valley quite to Braemar, and there was no carriage road thither! There was no turnpike road from Aberdeen further than to Banchory, half way to Ballater, fifty-six years ago, and that then made was the first turnpike road in Aberdeenshire. So a gentleman of Aberdeen assured me. Farther, all was a mere track, in which a horse could go. Yet the boy Byron, with his lame feet, and very lame he was, according to those who knew him, and plenty of such remain, rambled all about this wild region. The passion with which he traversed those scenes is expressed in his poem to Mary Duff, the equally beloved object of his boyish heart.

"When I roved a young Highlander on the dark heath,
And climbed thy steep summit, oh Morven ! of snow,
To gaze on the torrent that thundered beneath,

Or the mist of the tempest that gathered below;

Untutored by science, a stranger to fear,

And rude as the rocks where my infancy grew,

No feeling, save one, to my bosom was dear,

Need I say, my sweet Mary, 'twas centred in you?

"Yet it could not be love, for I knew not the name,-
What passion can dwell in the heart of a child?
But still I perceive an emotion the same

As I felt, when a boy in the crag-covered wild.

One image alone on my bosom impressed,

I loved my bleak regions, nor panted for new;

And few were my wants, for my wishes were blessed,

And pure were my thoughts, for my soul was with you.

"I arose with the dawn; with my dog as my guide,
From mountain to mountain I bounded along;
I breasted the billows of Dee's rushing tide,

And heard at a distance the Highlander's song," &c.

That he was intensely happy here the poetry and memories of his whole life testify. That he must have strolled far and wide, and, as he says, with his dog for his guide, is no doubt true; but, lame as he was, it appears little less than miraculous. "I mind him weel,” said a shepherd still living in the valley near the farm: "He was iust such a boy as yon," pointing to a boy of eleven or twelve;

"and used to play about wi' us here. His feet were both turned in, and he used to lift one over the other as he walked; and when he ran he would sometimes catch one against the other, and tumble over neck and heels. We heard that in England he had got his feet straightened."

How such a boy could get about there, over the rough heath and up the distant mountains, is strange enough. We do not hear that he had any pony, and there was only his mother or the maid to accompany him. Mrs. Byron, by all accounts, was not well-fitted for much walking, far less climbing up hills; yet it is quite certain that he rambled far and wide, and, it is most probable, alone. Loch-na-garr, Morven, and Culbleen, are the grand features of the mountain scenery, and it is evident that the wild and beautiful solitudes of the Dee-side, and the mountains around, had made a deep and indelible impression on his imagination. It is just the scenery to awake the poet, where the soul and the organization of the poet exist. The deep solitude; the stern mountains, with all their changes of storm and sunshine-now blazing and burning out in all the brightness of a clear sun, now softly beaming beneath the slanting light of evening, and now black as midnight beneath a gloomy sky, looking awfully forth from their sable and yet transparent veil of shadow. These, and the sound of waters, and the mild beauty of the low, heath-clad hills and soft glens, where the birch hangs its weeping and fragrant branches over the lovely harebell and the secret nest of the grouse, were the imagery which surrounded the boy Byron during the summer months; and the boy "was father to the man," seeking out ever afterwards, from land to land, all that was lovely and sublime in nature.

But he was now called upon to say

'Adieu, then, ye hills, where my childhood was bred,
Thou sweet flowing Dee, to thy waters adieu!"

and the scene changed to England; solitude to cities; poverty to fortune; and the nameless obscurity of the juvenile mountain wanderer to title and unimagined fame.

Before, however, quitting this favourite scene of the early life of Byron, which he never again visited, I must notice it under the aspect which it happened to present to me from the particular time of my arrival. It was on the 18th of August, just one week after the commencement of the grouse-shooting season, and every inn on the road was crowded with sportsmen and their servants. Lord Castlereagh, on his way to his shooting ground in Braemar, was my next neighbour on the mail from Aberdeen; and his wide acquaintance with the sports of various countries, the capercailzie and bearshooting of the north of Europe, in particular of Russia, made his descriptions of them, as well as of the deer-shooting of Braemarhis particular sport-very interesting. But the weather of that wet summer was at this time outrageously rainy, and from every wayside inn the lugubrious faces of sportsmen were visible. As we drew up at the village of Banchory, the door was thronged with livery servants, ard a gentleman at an open upper window, eyeing

anxiously the showery clouds hanging upon the hills, caught sight of Lord Castlereagh, and called out, in a tone of momentary animation quickly relapsing into melancholy,—“Ha! Cass! are you there! Here I have been these four days, and nothing but this confounded rain. Not a foot have I yet been able to set upon the heath. There are six of us."

"Who is that who addresses you so familiarly?" "Oh! it is Sir John Guest!" Poor Sir John! gatory!

What a pur

On went the coach. At Ballater, again, the door was thronged with livery servants; the rain was falling in torrents; there were nine shooting gentlemen in the house, not one of whom could stir out. After taking luncheon, Lord Castlereagh went with the mail to Braemar, and I, with expanded umbrella, issued forth to explore the neighbourhood as well as I might, but was speedily driven back again by the deluging rains, which made every highway an actual river. The next day was Sunday, and the sun rose with a beauty and warmth which seemed to say-"Gentlemen sportsmen, you shall at least have fair weather for church." A more glorious day never was sent down over mountain and moorland; and few are the scenes on which fine summer weather confers a greater beauty than on those around Ballater. Along these pleasant valleys the country people, all health and animation, in cordial conversation streamed along to and from church. I climbed the dark moorland hills, where the wild flocks scudded away at the presence of a stranger, and the grouse rose up in whole coveys, with a startling whirr and strange cries, and gazed down into the vales on the most lovely little homesteads, on their crimson heathery knolls, amid their beautiful little woodlands of birch. Above arose on every side the solemn and dreary bulks of Loch-na-garr, Morven, and Culbleen. It was a day and a scene amongst a thousand. Night fell; morning again rose-Monday morning! Hundreds of anxious sportsmen throughout the Highlands, and thousands of their anxious attendants, eager for the hills

"And the rain fell as though the world would drown!"

When I looked out of my bedroom window, there were men and boys standing in front of the inn, casting dreary looks at the ragged and low-sweeping curtains of clouds that shrouded every hill, and then longing looks at the windows, if the slightest possible breaks in those clouds occurred, hoping to be called and engaged as guides and game-carriers on the hills. Keepers were walking about, and bringing bags of shot in. Men and boys, already looking wet and dirty, as if they had tramped with their strong shoes some distance out of the country to come hither, asked them if they thought it would take up; and they cast knowing looks at the clouds and shook their heads. But anon! as if in very desperation, there were dogs let loose, which ran helter skelter over the bridge towards the hills, full of eager life for the sport; and gigs full of gentlemen, three or our together, packed close, in white hats, or glazed and turned-up

wide-awakes, and thick shooting-jackets, close buttoned up, with their guns erect at their sides, setting off for their shooting grounds. They were determined to be at their stations, perhaps some ten miles off, and take the chance of a change in the weather. Good luck to them!

I took my way back again to Aberdeen; and lo! at Banchory, the inn-door still crowded with livery servants, and poor Sir John Guest still seated at the selfsame window, with long and melancholy face, watching the clouds! Truly the sporting, not less than the Christian life, has its crosses and its matifications.

Lord Byron's first journey into England was with his mother, to see his ancestral abode-his abbey and estate of Newstead. It was a considerable step from the rooms over the shop at Aberdeen, or the little hut at Bellatrich, with 1231. a-year. But yet for a lord it was no very magnificent subject of contemplation. The estate had been dreadfully denuded of wood, and showed a sandy nakedness of meagre land, the rental of a great part of which would be high at ten shillings an acre. The old abbey was dilapidated, and menacing in various places to tumble in. The gardens were a wilderness of neglect.

"Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;

In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle

Have choked up the rose which late bloomed in the way."

The place was, after a time, leased to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, who let ruin take its course, as the old lord had done. When the old lord died, the host of crickets which he had fed are said to have taken immediate flight, issuing forth in such a train that the servants could scarcely move without treading on them. When Lord Grey's lease was out, he and his hounds took their flight in like manner; but this was some years afterwards, and for the present Mrs. Byron betook herself to Nottingham, and placed her son under the care of Mr. Rogers, the principal schoolmaster there, and under that of a quack, one Lavender, to straighten his feet. Thence they removed to London, where they resided in Sloane-terrace, and Byron was sent to Dr. Glennie's school at Dulwich. Thence he was removed to Harrow; and during the years he spent there Mrs. Byron went to reside again at Nottingham, and afterwards at Southwell, with occasional visits to Bath and Cheltenham. Harrow and Cambridge were, of course, for the chief part of the years of his minority, his proper homes, but the vacations were chiefly spent at Southwell, with frequent visits to Newstead and Annesley. Before his minority, however, expired, Lord Grey de Ruthyn had quitted Newstead, leaving it in a deplorable state of dilapidation, and Lord Byron incurred great expense in repairing the abbey, much indeed beyond the reach of his resources. His income was small, for the best part of his ancestral property had been sold by the late lord, especially the Rochdale estate, which was afterwards recovered. The allowance for his education was all that he could claim from his trustees, and his mother's small income was eked out by a pension of 300l. per annum.

Z

The debts incurred by him for the repairs of Newstead not being legally recoverable, as they were incurred by a minor, remained for years unpaid; and the importunity of his creditors was one of the strongest motives for his early travelling abroad. The failure of his hope of marrying Miss Chaworth, and adding her estate, which adjoined his own, to Newstead, was, both in affection and in point of fortune, a severe blow. His embarrassments finally compelled him to sell Newstead, and to make a mariage de convenance, which, to a person of his peculiar temperament, habits, and opinions, was certain to result in trouble and disunion. From these causes his life became unsettled and embittered; and scarcely had he reached the period at which his fame ought to have made his native land the proudest and happiest of all lands to him, when he abandoned it for ever, and

"In the wilds

Of fiery climes he made himself a home,

And his soul drank their sunbeams: he was girt

With strange and dusky aspects: he was not
Himself like what he had been: on the sea

And on the shore he was a wanderer."-The Dream, vol. x. p. 249.

Of Newstead and Annesley I have given a particular account in the Rural Life of England. To those I must refer, and have only to dd that, in the hands of Lord Byron's old schoolfellow Colonel Wildman, Newstead is restored and maintained as all lovers of English genius would wish it to be, and is ever open to their survey. Since that account, too, the old hall of Annesley has undergone a renovation, and the scene of melancholy desertion and decay there described, exists now only in the volume which recorded it. In the present paper Southwell and Harrow will chiefly demand our attention.

Southwell, during the period of his Harrow school life, became a most favourite resort of his. His mother had settled down there. Body and mind were now in progress of expansion towards manhood. His relish for society, his love of fame, and his love of poetry, were every day more and more developing themselves. But his world yet was only the school world. He was shy in general society. Here, however, he formed a group of friends of superior taste and education, in whose quiet little circle he became speedily at home; and for a time into this circle he seemed to throw himself, with all his heart and youthful enthusiasm. The Pigotts, the Beechers, the Leacrofts, &c. were his friends. Here he used to spend his summer vacations; here it seems he spent nearly the whole of one year. His dogs, his horses, firing at marks, swimming, and private theatricals, were his amusements, and for a time Southwell was his world. The Pigotts were his great friends, and there he went in and out, spent his evenings or spent his days, to his great contentment. A wider and a gayer world had not yet opened upon him, and for a season Southwell and his friends there were everything to him. Of course, in this little circle he was the great hero; it is not often that a little cathedral town can catch a live lord: nothing could be done without him! every flattering attention awaited him; and for a time he was