LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 121 



t' money to buy t' iron with.' So the lad, whose name was Sylvester, 

 bought the iron, made the chain, and received ^20,000 from His 

 Majesty. All who tried the job before him had failed to make the 

 chain sustain its own weight, but Sylvester, they said, hit upon the 

 plan of making the links circular, so that the strain pulled them 

 oval, but did not break them. With part of the reward Sylvester 

 bought Wintersett, and, when he died, it went to his sister Nannie, 

 who married the Recorder of Pontefract." 



Onward over the ploughed land we come to a stream which runs 

 into the lake. A wooden bridge leads us to the magnificent old 

 oaks between which Waterton erected his monumental cross. His 

 Jacobite grandfather found, we may suppose, some solace in natural 

 objects for the disappointments of life, or he would not have desired 

 to be buried by the avenue of elms. With Waterton nature had 

 been a passion, and the grave of his grandfather could hardly avoid 

 suggesting to him the thought that he, too, would lie in the cherished 

 grounds where tree, and shrub, and water, and animals had been to 

 him as so many personal friends. A little bench, close by the oaks, 

 was one of his favourite seats. Here, in the warm stillness of summer 

 noon, he would ruminate on the inexhaustible topics of Natural 

 History, and call to mind all the wonders and wild luxuriance of the 

 tropics, till he almost felt himself, where he often longed to be, in 

 the never-ending forests of Guiana. A short distance further on was 

 another favourite retreat, for we reach the head of the lake, which 

 is divided by a causeway from a swamp that continues up to the 

 park wall, and, as the swamp was a rare place for all kinds of birds, 

 Waterton spent many an hour perched in the branches of a large 

 oak, alternately reading some Latin poet, and observing the creatures 

 around him. 



The passage along the eastern bank of the lake to the causeway 

 will give a sufficient idea of the nature of the park grounds without 

 a similar description of the western bank. Let us return to the iron 

 foot-bridge over the lake on the south, and at the mainland end we 

 find a half-moon of grass, bounded by a semi-circular yew hedge, 

 which shuts out the stables. Behind the stables is the garden, and 

 a sylvan paradise, called, from a cave within it, the Grotto. Through 

 this elysium runs the stream which flows from the lake, along the 



