1 8 Middlewood. 



and the liability of the stream to be flooded at the 

 point referred to, make it in a wet season rather trouble- 

 some to penetrate. Just at the entrance, on the bank 

 opposite the water-wheel, tradition points out the site 

 of a cave, the opening now closed with earth and 

 heavy stones, overhung by the roots of an old oak- 

 tree, and shaded in front by hazels and sallows. About 

 a hundred years ago, this cave is said to have been the 

 retreat and workshop of a coiner, who was detected 

 and subsequently executed, through information given 

 in the prattle of his little daughter. There is something 

 so inexpressibly sad in the idea of an innocent child 

 being made the means of her father's disgrace and 

 death, that it is to be hoped tradition is in this par- 

 ticular mistaken. Incomparably more interesting than 

 any tales of crime and trouble are the natural produc- 

 tions found, like Rosalind's verses, "in the wood," 

 and especially in that sweet season when Spring, still 

 retaining her robes, bids welcome to early Summer, 

 and the two keep festival, as friends should always, 

 with the glow upon the heart ; the blue-bells not yet 

 gone, though the rose-lychnis is beginning to suffuse the 

 shades with its luminous blushes, and the anemone, 

 that most social of wild-flowers, still loiters in quiet 

 corners, as if to watch the advent of the golden dead- 

 nettle. 



Pursuing the path for about a mile, with fortunes as 

 varying as those ascribed to Florence, we come at last to 



