burdens in the chapel, and bring them to-morrow with the rest, and take tea with us.' 'Naay, naay,' said they,

we will bodder nin with your tea, we want oor burdens owt, and we're gaen to hev them and aw.'

"But with these two exceptions, the folk left them in the chapel till Monday, and came next day to tea, and that was the origin of the 'Rushbearing do,' as we call it on Monday. Mr. North gave them the tea each year till he died, and then Mr. Benson Harrison of Green Bank carried it on, and left money to continue it till his wife's death, which took place this year."

"Yes," said the old gentleman, "how well I remember the sight of the tables; they cut holes in the middle of the planks to put the sticks of the burdens through, and other burdens were made with pedestals to place on the table. How beautiful that happy sight was, and what races, and what wrestling, and what 'kiss-in-the-ring' used to take place after. Poor North, I heard Faber preach the funeral sermon on the Sunday following his death, and I remember Faber took as his text, John xi. 11, 12, and spoke of the beauty of a good life lived in country surroundings, where a man's character was realized in a way that could never be known in the crush of the large towns."

"I have a copy of that sermon by me still," said Miss Nicholson, and presently she returned with it.

The sermon, which spoke of the sudden loss of Ford North, who had died on February 15th, 1843, was entitled A Warning to Country Neighbourhoods. With this, from her repository of sacred relics, Miss Nicholson brought, as bearing upon the subject of our conversation, a sermon, also preached by Faber, on the Ambleside Rushbearing.

"You see," continued our informer, "he and Owen Lloyd cared for such customs. Faber liked anything old. I have sometimes thought it was his love of ancientry that took him to Rome, and Owen Lloyd loved anything connected with children or flowers. I think that verse in the hymn

and

'Our fathers to the House of God,
As yet a building rude,
Bore offerings from the flowery sod,
And fragrant rushes strewed.'

'Sing we the good Creator's praise,

Who gives us sun and showers,
To cheer our hearts with fruitful days,
And deck our world with flowers,'

had a good deal to do with making us dress our burdens with flowers and rushes instead of paper. At any rate, as I said, what with Mr. North and Faber and Lloyd we got refined. Now, the ladies and gentlemen work at the devices for the burdens, and a deal of making and dressing they take I can assure you."

As she spoke there entered one who had been vicar a generation ago at Ambleside.

"Yes," said he, "and I too did all I could to discourage artificial flowers and paper, and to encourage the use of real flowers, and I only regret one thing, and that is that the ladies make the designs for the bearers, instead of the <children making them entirely with their own hands.”

"Has any alteration in the custom of Rushbearing day taken place in the present generation?" I said.

"No," he replied. "The new church, the present Church of St. Mary's, was opened, when was it?"

“14th of January, 1854," interposed Miss Nicholson; “I

know that, because Faber preached the opening sermon, and the date is printed on the fly-leaf."

"Well, ever since then," continued the clergyman, "the Rushbearing has taken place there, and the children march round the town and to the church,-the band playing,-at five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and their burdens or rushbearings are ranged along the walls at the far end of the seats. Then a prayer or two is said, the Rushbearing hymn is sung, and sometimes I used to give an address. I believe that is the custom still. The children file out of church, pass the lych gate, and there receive each of them the traditional gingerbread cake. The burdens are left till Monday, when the tea-feast is given, and all who have a burden meet-nay used to meet-in the Green Bank field for fun and jollity."

Just then we heard the bang whang of the drum, and— shade of George Banks forgive the refinement and parade of later and less simple days than thine! the grandest triumphal procession I had seen for long enough, passed down the street with the volunteer band playing furiously.

My old friend clutched his hat, and away we went to watch the end of the triumphal show. Stars, triangles, crowns, crosses, Roman standards, harps, and every kind of cross-breed of these, wrought of rushes, lilies, roses, moss, Canterbury bells, were borne aloft, and in front a great palm frond from Capernaum, as I heard, waved on high.

The church was entered, and churchwardens and others quickly disposed of the devices—some were placed within the altar rails, some shone in the window recesses, some along the walls. The Rushbearing hymn was sung, a few prayers said, and after a short address, the benediction and a glad Amen, away went the Rushbearers out of the church to the lych gate for the accustomed ginger-cake.

Next day we thronged the church to hear the sermons in aid of the parish schools, sermons in which mention was made of an honoured name, the name which will be remembered along with Ford North's, Faber's, and Owen Lloyd's, the name of good Mrs. Harrison, née Dorothy Wordsworth of Green Bank. I visited her tomb afterwards, I wish I could have seen it heaped with rushbearings, she so cared for the annual feast, but she was not forgotten.

Upon a very green bank, called Red-bottom Hill, on the following day, in memory of her love for the children and their Rushbearing festival, some four hundred of the Ambleside people, great and small, gathered to keep the Rushbearing feast; there in mid-valley to the strains of the volunteer band, they danced and wrestled, and seesawed and swung, and raced and jumped, till the last light faded from Windermere, and the clouds came down to rest until the moon rose upon Red Screes and Scandale head. The folk forgot all about St. Anne, all about the old days of earthen floor and church dedication, but they were happy. My old friend went to see the sport and said, "Ambleside has changed, stick and stone, since I was a boy, but there's a heart in the old place yet. Long live the Rushbearing!"

NOTE. Since this article was written, Miss Nicholson has passed away, and one of the beautiful sycamores at the northern entrance to the town has fallen, but a sapling has been planted in its place. Those who care to see what Ambleside was like in old times, should not fail to look at the unique series of photographs to be seen at Mr. Herbert Bell's, Photographer, Ambleside.

PURPLE AND IVORY AT THE LAKES.

MARCH had come in like a lion: the blizzard was felt in every dale. Men shook their heads and said that "Th' girt fa' was likely coomed at last," and between the veils of sleet and skirts of hail loomed into sudden brightness the sunlit heads of far-seen snowy hills.

All through the night the winds were loud, but "silence came with the breaking dawn, and a hush with the wakened. bird," and as I lay in bed at that most hospitable of Lakecountry hostels, 'Rigg's,' at Windermere, I heard such a chorus of thrush and blackbird song as made me feel that it was May.

I had come to see spring colour in Westmoreland, and rising betimes, climbed Orrest Head. Birds to the right of me, birds to the left of me, shouted their hearts out; crocuses flashed in the Elleray Gardens, and daffodils broke into flame. Yesterday was winter; to-day

"It is the first glad day of March

Each moment lovelier than before,"

and as I passed through the woodland path that gives access to Orrest Head, I almost felt the fragrance of the larch, and the scent of summer in the air.