"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul that art the eternity of thought By day or star-light thus from my first dawn -Prelude, Book I., lines 401-410. AN OLD-TIME RUSHBEARING AT AMBLESIDE. HE certainly looked an old man, but his eye was bright; and the manner he came down from off that coach, as it pulled up in the Ambleside market-place, would have surprised you. "Bless me," he said, "how changed everything is! Where is the woollen factory with its gallery for the weavers to pass out and peer over, or go down from by the steps into the street, when the coach pulled up short at the sign of the 'Old Black Cock'? Is that 'Queen's Hotel' all that remains to us of the 'Black Cock,' and the home of the weavers' industry that used to go on in an upper story above it? And where is the quaint bit of timber and stucco that used to act as roof-tree above the hollow entry close beside 'Old Mickey's,' the bread bakerMickey, the maker of 'snaps' that won immortality for their crispness and their flavour? All gone? Where, then, is the ancient Cross-House, beneath whose open portico, on every Thursday at eleven o'clock at the sound of the bell that used to hang on the chimney close by, the yarn spinners brought their yarns to be 'scaled' and priced? Dear me, how one remembers the stone seat, and the great chest A where the public scales and weights were kept, and the children-Nicholson, I think they called them—that pushed their noses against the old diamond-paned windows in the little room above. That chimney of Hunter's shop looks the same, but where is the Thursday bell? Where is the cross? You don't mean to say they have done away with the old Market Cross that rose, a solid pillar, out of its double or treble mound of circular steps? Where is Gregson's shop? I mean old Gregson, whose brother rose to be a man of substance, and became the public benefactor of Lancaster-so like these Westmoreland men of large brains and powers to rise. Where are the old weaving sheds at the top of the hill near the cross? The Salutation Inn has a very poor salutation for one who remembers their picturesqueness. Where are the great Scotch firs that shadowed the people as they passed up the street toward the post office, or lounged in front of the White Horse'? All cut down; but the people of Ambleside are sorry for their loss, and have planted a boulevard with sycamores, and still preserve two other sycamores at the entrances of the town, which give to all who enter therein a most joyous welcome, and a sense of quiet rural beauty such as must affect even the most careless. "But where is the post office, with its little room, wherein one met all the wit and talent of the neighbourhood in olden time-Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge, Dr. Arnold, Faber, and Owen Lloyd? Lile Owey, as we called him, used to live in the house. I remember his sittingroom well, just over and to the left of the door. Is Mrs. Nicholson alive, the post-mistress? The character of the whole place, the humble giver of all kindness, whom all trusted as a friend. Cornelius, her son-is he dead too?" "Yes," I replied, "and a very remarkable man he was |