AMONG the pastoral mountains of Cumberland dwells an unmingled and patriarchal race of people, who live in a primitive manner, and retain many peculiar usages different from their neighbours of the valley and the town. They are imagined by antiquarians to be descended from a colony of Saxon herdsmen and warriors, who, establishing themselves among the mountainous wastes, quitted conquest and spoliation for the peaceful vocation of tending their flocks, and managing the barter of their rustic wealth for the luxuries fabricated by their more ingenious neighbours. In the cultivation of corn they are unskilful or uninstructed; but in all that regards sheep and cattle, they display a knowledge and a tact which is the envy of all who live by the fleece and sheers. Their patriarchal wealth enables them to be hospitable, and dispense an unstinted boon among all such people as chance, curiosity, or barter, scatter over their inheritance. It happened on a fine summer afternoon, that I found myself engaged in the pursuit of an old dog-fox, which annually eluded the vigilance of the most skilful huntsmen; and, leaving Keswick far behind, pursued my cunning adversary from glen to cavern, till, at last, he fairly struck across an extensive track of upland, and sought refuge from the hotness of our pursuit in one of the distant mountains. I had proceeded far on this wide and desolate track, ere I became fatigued and thirsty, and—what true sportsmen reckon a much more serious misfortune-found myself left alone and far behind-while the shout and the cheer of my late companions began to grow faint and fainter, and I at last heard only the bleat of the flocks or the calling of the curlew. The upland on which I had entered appeared boundless on all sides, while amid the brown wilderness arose innumerable green grassy knolls, with clumps of small black cattle and sheep grazing or reposing on their sides and sum

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mits. They seemed so many green islands floating amid the ocean of brown blossom, with which the heath was covered. I stood on one of the knolls, and looking around, observed a considerable gushing from a small copse of hazel and lady-fern, which, seeking its way into a green and narrow glen, pursued its course with a thousand freakish windings and turnings.While following with my eye the course of the pure stream, out of which I had slaked my thirst, I thought I heard something like the sound of a human voice coming up the glen; and, with the hope of finding some of my baffled companions of the chace, I proceeded along the margin of the brook. At first, a solitary and stunted alder, or hazel bush, or mountain ash, in which the hawk or the hooded crow had sought shelter for their young, was all the protection the stream obtained from the rigour of the mid-day sun. The glen became broader and the stream deeper, gliding over a bed of pebbles, shining, large, and round, half-seen, half-hid, beneath the projection of the grassy sward it had undermined; and raising all the while that soft and simmering din, which contributes so much of the music to pastoral verse. A narrow foot-path, seldom frequented, winded with the loops and turns of the brook. I had wandered along the margin nearly half-a-mile, when I approached a large and doddered tree of green holly, on the top of which sat a raven, gray-backed and bald-headed from extreme age, looking down intently on something which it thought worthy of watching beneath. I reached the tree unheard or unheeded,-for the soft soil returned no sound to my foot; and on the sunward side I found a woman seated on the grass. She semed bordering on seventy years of age-with an unbent and unbroken frame-a look of lady-like stateliness-and an eye of that sweet and shining hazel colour, of which neither age nor sorrow had been able to dim the

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As the old dame ceased her song, she opened her lap, from which she showered a profusion of flowerssuch as are gathered rather in the wood or the wild than the garden, on two green ridges which lay side by side beneath the shade of the green holly. At each handful she strewed she muttered, in an under tone, what sounded like the remains of an ancient form of prayer; when turning toward the path she observed me, and said- Youth, comest thou here to smile at beholding a frail woman strew the dust of the beautiful and the brave with mountain-thyme, wild mint, and scented hawthorn? I soothed her by a tone of submission and reverence. "Eleanor Selby, may the curse of the ballad, which thou sangest even now, be mine, if I come to scorn those who honour the fair and the brave. Had I known that the ancient lovers, about whom we so often sung, slept by this lonely stream, I would have sought Cumberland for the fairest and rarest flowers to shower on their grassy neds." "I well believe thee youth,' said the old dame, mollified at once by my respect for the sirname of Selby," how could I forget the altar of Lanercost and thee? There be few at thy wilful and froward time of life, who would not mock the poor wandering woman, and turn her wayward affections into ridicule; but I see thy respect for her sitting shining in these sweet and moist eyes of hazel." While she indulged in this language she replaced her long white locks under her bonnet, resumed her mantle and her staff, and, having adjusted all to her liking, and taken a look at the two graves, and at the raven who still maintained his seat on the summit of the bush, she addressed me again. "But, come youth, come-the sun is fast walking

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down the side of the western mountains: Fremmet-ha is a good mile distant; and we will be wise to seek the friendship of its porch, with an unset sun above our heads." She took my hand, and exerting an energy I little expected, we descended the glen together, keeping company with the brook, which received and acknowledged, by an augmented murmur, the accession of several lesser streams. At length we came where the glen, suddenly expanding into a beautiful vale, and the brook into a small deep and clear lake, disclosed to my sight the whole domestic establishment of one of the patriarchal portioners of the mountainous regions of Cumberland. On the northern side of the valley, and fronting the mid-day sun, stood a large old fashioned house, constructed of rough and undressed stones, such as are found in abundance on the northern uplands, and roofed with a heavy coating of heath, near an ell in thickness, the whole secured with bands of wood and ropes of flax, in a manner that resembled the checks of a highland plaid. Something which imitated a shepherd's crook and a sheathed sword was carved on a piece of hewn stone in the front, and underneath was cut in rude square raised letters "RANDAL RODE, 1545." The remains of old defences were still visible to a person of an antiquarian turn; but sheepfolds, cattle-folds, and swine-penns usurped the trench and the rampart, and filled the whole southern side of the valley. In the middle of the lake, shattered walls of squared stone were visible, and deep in the clear water a broken and narrow causeway might be traced, which once secured to the proprietor of the mansion, a safe retreat against any hasty incursion from the restless borderers; who, in former times, were alternately the

plunderers, or defenders of their country. The descendants of Randal Rode seemed to be sensible that their lot was cast in securer times, and instead of practising with the cross-bow, or that still more fatal weapon the hand-bow, or with the sword, or with the spear; they were collected on a small green plat of ground on the margin of the lake, to the number of twelve or fourteen, indulging in the rustic exercises of wrestling, leaping, throwing the bar, and casting the stone. Several old white headed men were seated at a small distance on the ground, maidens continually passed hackwards and forwards, with pails of milk, or with new-moulded cheese, casting a casual glance at the pastime of the young men the valley all the while re-murmuring with the din of the various contests.

As we approached, a young man who had thrown the stone-a pebble massy and round-beyond all the marks of his companions, perceived us coming, and came running to welcome the old woman with all the unrestrained joyousness of eighteen. "Welcome Dame Eleanor Selby, welcome to Fremmet-ha-for thy repose I have ordered a soft warm couch, and from no fairer hands than those of Maudiline Rode-and for thy gratification, as well as mine own, have I sought far and wide for a famous ballad of the Selbys, but we are fallen on evil days-for the memory of our oldest men only yielded me fragments-these I have pieced together, and shall gladly sing it with all the grace I may."-" Fair fall thee youth, said the old woman, pleased at the revival of a traditional

rhyme recording the fame of her house-thy companions are all clods of the valley-no better than the stones they cast, the bars they heave, and the dull earth they leap upon, compared to thee.-But the Selbys' blood within thee overcomes that of the Rodes."-The young man came close to her ear, and in an interceding whisper, said: "It is true, Dame Eleanor Selby, that my father is but a tender of flocks, and nowise comparable to the renowned house of Selby, with whom he had the fortune to intermarry-but, by the height of Skiddaw, and the depth of Solway, he is as proud of his Saxon blood as the loftiest of the land; and the welcome of that person would be cold, and his repulse certain, who should tell him the unwelcome tale that he wedded above his degree." "Youth, youth, said the old woman, with hasty and marked impatience, I shall, for thy sake, refrain from comparing the churlish name of Rode with the gentle name of Selby;but I would rather sit a winter night on Skiddaw, than have the best who bear the name of Rode to imagine that the hem of a Selby's robe had not more of gentleness than seven acres of Rodes's. But thou hast promised me a song-even let me hearken to it now in the free open air-sitting by an ancient summer seat of the Selbys

it will put me in a mood to enter thy mother's abode." She seated herself on the margin of the lake, while young Randal Rode, surrounded by his companions, sung in a rough free voice the legendary ballad of which I had the good fortune to obtain a copy, through the kindness of old Eleanor.

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