other old ponds, now choked up with mud and weeds, and wild with flags and the black spear-heads of the tall club-rush.

Of the seclusion and desertion of this old "moated grange" some idea may be formed from this fact:-I asked the woman which was the way from the house to Brailes, the next village on my route. She replied, she "really could not well direct me -for there once had been a road, but it was now grown up; but I must go directly out at the front gate, through the belt of wood opposite, and hold across the common, as well as I could, till I saw the tower of Brailes."

In following these encouraging directions to the best of my ability, I speedily found myself on a wild hilly moorland to the south-west of the house, rough with furze, old ant-hills of a yard in height and width, and bogs full of sedge, that would have delighted the eye of Bewick. But I could discern no trace of a path, either to Brailes or any other Christian village. I looked round in silence, and above me on a hill to the left I beheld an old grey pyramid of stone, which had once boasted a vane on its summit, but now exhibited only its iron rod, ruefully leaning as if to look down after its old companions—the weathercock and initials of the four quarters of the heavens. I ascended to this object, in hope that it was meant to mark the site of a prospect into some inhabited country. I walked round it to discern some inscription, explaining the cause of its erection, or some entrance into it; but there was neither entrance nor inscription. It was as mysterious a grey and ancient pyramid as any one could desire. Though not more

perhaps, than a furlong from the house, I turned and saw that the house was already hidden in its deep combe, and shrouded by its wooded hills, and I was sensibly impressed with the utter loneliness and silence of the scene. The caw of a rook, or the plaintive bleat of a sheep on the moor, were the only sounds. that reached me; and the only moving objects were the sails of the old mill on the distant hill, and of slowly-progressing plough-teams far off in the heavy fields. I never, in the moors of Scotland or of Cornwall, felt such a brooding sense of a forlorn solitude. I need not have wondered, had I looked, as I have done since, and found, in the old maps of the county, this object laid down as Compton-Pike, and the place itself as the World's End!

There was nothing for it but to push on in the most probable direction of my route, and fortunately I soon spied-a man! an old man, heavily mounting a stile on the hill-side, which led into the fields. I ran up as fast as I could, leaped the stile and called to him. But by this time he had advanced a good way into the next field. I still ran and shouted, but the wind blew towards me-the man was very old, and, doubtless, deaf. He went stalking on, with a tall staff in one hand, and a bag on his back-a figure worth anything to a painter, but a most provoking one to me. Luckily at this moment I descried another man at a distance, actually advancing towards me. I waited his approach, and he soon pointed the direction of my Two such men in such a place were really little short

course.

of a miracle; and this was as tall, picturesque, and weather

beaten an old fellow as the other. He was a shepherd, who had been all his life thereabout, but could give no more information respecting the old house than what I had heard before-that it had been stripped of its furniture ninety years ago, and some sent to Ashby Castle, and the rest sold. And what was this done for? "O! elections, sir! elections! they did it that have brought the hammer into many a good old house!"

Pondering on the old man's words, I walked over the fields to Brailes, glad that the roof had been kept on the old house, and hopeful, if the wild solitude of its situation did not prevent it, that the rapidly increasing wealth and well-known taste of its present noble owner, may yet cause the refitting of Compton Winyates, and its restoration to all its ancient state.

DURING the whole time I had been wandering in Cornwall, the weather had been most glorious. Now and then, indeed, the southerly wind brought up from the sea one of those thick fogs that wrap up every thing in a moment, and make some of the dreary scenes of that wild country tenfold more dreary; every object being enlarged, and yet only dimly descried through it, while the close stifling heat of it is intense, -you seem to walk about in a vapour-bath at a high temperature, and your clothes

are as thoroughly saturated with wet as if you had been dipped in the ocean. Now and then this had been the case, but only for a short time; the wind veered to another point, and the whole was swept away; driving over the plains like smoke, you might almost suppose there was a city on fire beneath it; and rolling along the sides of the bare hills and high craggy coasts in a style that might rejoice the eye of the painter and the poet. It had been fine, but this morning seemed to rise, as if it would outshine all its forerunners. The sun ascended into a sky of cloudless and soul-inspiring azure; a western breeze came with that fluttering freshness which tells you it comes from the ocean: the dew lay in glittering drops on the sides of the green hills on each hand, and the lark was high in heaven overhead, sending forth all the fulness of the heart's rejoicing, which mine endeavoured to express in vain.

I was fast approaching the western coast, and one of those deep wild valleys which, in so many places, run down from the mainland to the sea-shore-gashes cut, as it were by some giant hand in the days of the earth's infancy, to give a speedy access to the ocean, which you might have otherwise sought in vain amongst craggy hills and continuous precipices-now suddenly opened before me, and gave me, at once, sight of the magnificent Atlantic, flashing and rolling in the morning sun, and the lofty promontory and dark mouldering ruins I was in search of. I descended the ravine by its narrow rocky road. The polypody and hartstongue hung in long luxuriant greenness on the mossy acclivity at my right, the small wild rose blooming