74 Country Rambles. 



and in form like an acorn-cup. Moving on by the brook- 

 side, after crossing it at the bridge, we soon enter a 

 spacious meadow upon the left, and find ourselves again 

 in sight of the Mersey. On the bank of the stream, just 

 before quitting it, may be seen the wild red-currant, 

 making, with its neighbours, the wild raspberry and the 

 wood strawberry, a show of native fruits without parallel 

 in this neighbourhood. The meadow is of exuberant 

 fertility, owing to the annual flood from the river. 

 Leaving it, we come next to a rising ground, planted 

 with white willows, and from this emerge into a lane, 

 and so over the brow of the hill to Northen churchyard. 

 Northen, of course, becomes a resting-place, and a very 

 pleasant one it is. Both church and churchyard deserve 

 examination. The former contains a neat monument 

 to the memory of Mr. Worthington, the planter of the 

 poplars in the Carrs, and another with an epitaph 

 attributed to the pen of Alexander Pope.* Several 

 pretty memorials of the dead occur likewise among the 

 tombstones outside. On one fragment there is seemingly 

 written with green moss, the graving in the stone being 

 entirely filled up with the plant 



ANNE - DOVG 



H T A R - O F - 



HVMFREY S A 



VAGE DYED 



* The epitaph, Mr. Kelly kindly points out to me, is veritably 

 Pope's, but was originally written for the Hon. Robt. Digby and his 

 sister Mary. It was altered and abridged to suit the monument 

 which now bears it, one to the memory of the Hon. Penelope 

 Ducie Tatton, who died Jan. 31, 1747. 



