chilled by the continued rain, our provisions 

 were exhausted, and my courage began to fail 

 at the very time it was to be most severely 

 taxed ; for on looking down over the pre- 

 cipitous rock I was ascending, I saw the 

 heap of stones piled on the very spot where 

 the bleached body of poor Gough was found, 

 protected by his faithful dog ! By dint of my 

 intrepid companion's encouragement and ex- 

 ample, I at length gathered strength, gained 

 the summit, and then travelled down to the 

 inn, after fourteen hours on a high mountain, 

 among steep rude rocks, wet under foot, and 

 drenched with rain from above. 



A long list of plants, especially if given 

 with their Latin names, might be looked 

 upon as but ill suited for the pages of KichVs 

 Journal ; and I am one of those unfortunate 

 individuals who prefer the scientific to the 

 local, or as they are termed, English names. 

 Every one has seen the willow tree, some of 

 them rising to a height rivalling even the 

 stately oak.and others, as the cinnamon saugh, 

 not many feet in size; but I dare say not five 

 in a hundred of my readers could imagine 

 the existence of willows so small that a lady 

 might have two or three hundred of them 

 done up in a moderate -sized hand bouquet, 

 without being inconvenienced by their 

 weight. Such a willow is found on the tops 

 of all the high mountains in Scotland ; and 

 on three or four in England ; but, just as if 

 to try the reader's patience, has no English 

 name ; so that I am forced to call it by it3 

 expressive botanical cognomen, Salix Her- 

 hacea. This plant grows on the rocks of 

 Helvellyn but sparingly ; though on the loose 

 clay slate of Skiddau, it occurs in great 

 abundance. The sea pink is familiar to every 

 sea-side visitor, but is not met with again 

 till we reach the mountain top, where its 

 pretty pink flowers remind us of the majestic 

 swell of the ocean, and the salt spray ; both 

 which have delighted us as we paced the soft 

 sand in search of shells and starfishes. 



Really, I shall say no more about plants. 

 I will erase all those frightful Latin terms 

 from my page, fearful of destroying the 

 symmetry of some delicate reader's mouth ; 

 and end with a more congenial subject, the 

 description of Red Tarn by Wordsworth. 



"It was a cove, a huge recess, 



That keeps till June, December's snow ; 



A lofty precipice in front, 



A silent tarn below ! 



Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, 



Remote from public road or dwelling, 



Pathway or cultivated land, 



From trace of human foot or hand. 



There sometimes doth the leaping fish 

 Send down the Tarn a lonely cheer ; 

 The crags repeat the raven's croak 

 In symphony austere. 



Thither the rainbow comes — the cloud — 

 And mists that spread the flying shroud ; 

 And sunbeams, and the sounding blast, 

 That if it could, would hurry past, 

 But that enormous barrier binds it fast." 



D. 



THINGS BEYOND THE EYE. 



How true is it, that " Ignorance" is often 

 "bliss!" If a man, with a feeling heart, 

 were to see and know one millionth part of 

 what is going on every twelve hours in the 

 Great Metropolis, he would " weep tears of 

 blood." 



It is, however, unwise to be apathetically 

 indifferent to what little does come under 

 our eye ; and it behoves us to lend a help- 

 ing hand when it is in our power to do so, 

 to the unhappy. 



A report has recently been made to the 

 Secretary of State for the Home Department, 

 by Captain Hay, one of the Commissioners 

 of Metropolitan Police, on the operation 

 of the Common Lodging-Houses-Act, pur- 

 suant to an address of the House of Lords 

 dated the 10th Dec. By the daylight which 

 the Common Lodging-House-Act has at 

 length thrown into these regions, we learn 

 that about half the dwellings liable to the 

 operation of the Act have been examined 

 and registered, and they amount already to 

 three thousand three hundred, inhabited by 

 about fifty thousand persons, of about fifteen 

 to a house. That moderate proportion, how- 

 everts very much exceeded in a great number 

 of these nouses — invariably indeed in the 

 worst localities. 



The majority of the houses, it should be 

 explained, are small— eight-roomed may 

 be — with hardly any space behind, and as 

 destitute of accommodation as the combined 

 poverty and covetousness of builder, owner, 

 and tenant, can make them. TVe must 

 assume, then, simply eight rooms, and nothing 

 more ; the floors rotted, the windows, hap- 

 pily, we should think, often broken, the 

 doors gone altogether, the stairs decayed 

 with wear and filth, the ceilings fallen, the 

 drains long choked — if ever permeable ; and 

 everything that could render a house as little 

 of a house, except in its closeness, as could 

 be imagined. 



In these abodes, the inspectors employed 

 under the Act have frequently found seventy 

 or eighty in one small eight-roomed house, 

 thirty in a room 14 by 1-4, and so on — families, 

 or rather human clusters, being content with 

 a corner of a room, or less. Such houses 

 are rented by tenants; then let to sub-tenants. 

 By them again to weekly or nightly occu- 

 pants, in many gradations ; each step de- 

 riving a profit from that below, till the total 

 rent paid by the actual occupants of a filthy 

 hovel in Church dane will equal the rent 



