them of the superiority of the natural style of gardening over the meretricious system, which in his days it was the fashion to adopt.

On quitting Hackfall, we could not but wonder and regret, that there is no house upon or near its delicious grounds; that its beauties are seen by the eye, and walks trodden by the feet, of the stranger alone.

A cross stony road led us through Masham to Bedale, eleven miles from Hackfall; on our way to which place, about four miles to the south of it, we took from an eminence a final view of that glorious part of Yorkshire over which our route had conducted us. Sorry as we were to bid a final adieu to it, we could not but allow that it made all the amends possible for its desertion, by throwing at once before our eyes such a boundless sheet of hill and dale, wood and rock, meadows and fields, houses, villages, and towns, as equally baffles the painter's pencil to delineate, or the tourist's pen to describe.

Your's, &c.

R. W.

WITH the scenery of Hackfall we bade along

farewell to picturesque beauty; for in proportion as we approached the eastern coast of the kingdom, the features of Nature became more tame and insipid. Our attention, however, was called at Catterick to an artificial curiosity-the

River Tyne

GERMAN OCEAN

mound near the church-yard; supposed to be part of the Roman works connected with the station Caturactonium, which was situated in the neighbourhood of Catterick-Bridge, thrown across the river Swayle, a mile beyond the village.

Upon the military way made about sixteen hundred years ago, and still hard as adamant, we continued for some miles, and at length passed into the county of Durham at Croft-Bridge, an handsome modern structure over the Dar, with seven elliptical arches, whose ribbed roofs offer a singularity in pontic architecture. On our entrance into this palatinate we were presented with a natural phænomenon, called Hell-Kettles, three pits or holes in the ground filled with water, and said to be bottomless. Tradition informs us, they had their origin in a dreadful volcanic eruption which happened here A. D. 1179, when, after a vast swelling in the ground, and a discharge of fire and smoke, on the dissipation of the darkness, the earth was found to have fallen to its former level, and the only alteration in its surface was the three abysses we have just mentioned. The error with respect to their depth was, however, detected two or three years ago, in consequence of a search made for the body of a gentleman, who had drowned himself in one of these cauldrons. The

Dar, occasionally shewing itself to the right, accompanied us to the town, which receives its name from this stream; a place irregular in plan, and only remarkable for its beautiful and elegantly simple church. The population of the town is calculated to be between six and seven thousand, who are chiefly supported by fading manufactures, of diapers, huckabacks, and stuffs; not employing at present a tenth part of the hands which worked at them previously to the war.

The magnificent inn, a solitary house at Rushford, built by Sir John Haydon, in the neighbourhood of his noble seat at Windleston, afforded us such excellent accommodation and kindness of attention as deserve recollection and remark; indeed it was almost the only pleasing spot we saw for a dozen miles, in a country rather flat and uniform. But this character alters as we approach Durham, six miles from which, on the summit of Fairy-hill, a fine view of that city and a vast tract of circumjacent country, bounded on each side by hills, are at once unfolded. But the detail of the scenery in the neighbourhood of Durham is not made out till we get near its walls, when the singularity and beauty of it at once surprise and delight. A lofty circular hill, rising abruptly from the river Wear, which leads his waters round its rocky banks,

has been chosen for the proud and secure situation of the castle and cathedral. Under the protection of these a city of considerable extent grew up, and scattered itself down the steep of the hill, and along the other bank of the river. But all the beauty of Durham is confined to its outside; like all other old cities built in times when men were content to sacrifice comfort to safety, or before they had attained to adequate ideas of refinement or convenience; the streets are narrow, dark, and dirty-the houses old, gloomy, and ugly. Carpet and cotton manufactories formerly gave some little life to the sombrè of the place; but the same complaint existed here as in other towns; war had paralyzed their operations, and the melancholy skeletons of what they had hitherto been, now only remained.

The cathedral and castle afforded us an agreeable employment for the morning; in both we had the the perfection of early architecture. Of the former the western end is a fine specimen of the AngloNorman, plain and massive. Its few ornaments are of the zig-zag kind; a favourite stile of decoration at the æra of its erection, the latter end of the eleventh century and beginning of the twelfth; when Carilepho began, and Ralf Flambard executed, the work. Its length is four hundred and eleven feet,