Feb. 10, 1819. THIS morning a cockroach was found in the mouse-trap, where it had picked the bones of the tail, and eaten out both the eyes of a mouse, which had been taken in the night. This reminds me of what happened in the West Indies, in the ship with my brother. A boy who slept on deck barefooted, had the callus eaten off both his heels by the cockroaches, so that for some time he was not able to walk.

March 21, 1819. A RAT-CATCHER tells me that the white rat from Greenland has found

its way into this country. He caught twelve at Edinburgh, (I think). They are larger than the Norway rat,-measuring eighteen inches from the nose to the extremity of the tail, but they are not so fierce.

A.D. 1819. MANY hundred sycamore seeds are now shooting up upon the green before the parlour window, the winter having been so uncommonly mild that it has killed nothing. I never before remember to have seen any of these seeds growing there, though they must have been scattered there equally every autumn. If the place were deserted here, there would be a selfsown grove. And how many such must be produced in a winter like this.

A. D. 1815. Br Mr. Leathes's I heard a stuttering cuckoo,-whose note was cuccuckoo-cuccuckoo ; after three or four of which he brought out the word rightly.1

A MAN who worked for us was nettleproof. He would apply them to his face, and put them into his bosom, without feeling the sting.

MISS GRISDALE knows a single woman in this country who succeeded unexpectedly to £70,000. The only change she made in her mode of life was, to use lump sugar in her tea, and to drink it out of a china cup instead of a crockery one. But she was

The old child's rhyme says

"In the month of June, He alters his tune," and it is quite true.-J. W. W.

always much disturbed and provoked at paying the income tax.

WHEN Wordsworth was a boy, a saying was remembered among the people, that time was when a squirrel could have gone from Crow Park to Wytheburn Chapel, without touching the ground.

"WHILST the villains of Low Furness were employed in all the useful arts of agriculture, the woodlanders of High Furness were charged with the care of the flocks and herds, which pastured the verdant side of the fells, to guard them from the wolves which lurked in the thickets below; and in winter to browse them with the tender sprouts and sprigs of the hollies and ash. This custom has never been discontinued in High Furness, and the holly trees are carefully preserved for that purpose, where all other wood is cleared off; and large tracts of common pasture are so covered with these trees as to have the appearance of a forest of hollies. At the shepherd's call the flock surround the holly bush, and receive the croppings at his hand, which they greedily nibble up, and bleat for more. A stranger unacquainted with this practice would imagine the holly bush to have been sacred among the fellanders of Furness. The mutton so fed has a remarkable fine flavour."-WEST'S Antiquities of Furness, xlv. A.D. 1774.

p.

"In former times, when salt was procured from sea sand, by pouring water on it, and then boiling down the water to a salt, grants of sand from the lord of the manor were common on the sea coast."-Ibid. p. 191.

"THE place near Ulverston where Martin Swart encamped, when he landed with Mac Lambert, Simnel, and the Flemish troops, is called Swartmoor to this day. There is a tradition that Sir Thomas Broughton did

2 WORDSWORTH, I think, has mentioned the fact in his Poems, and SoUTHEY in his Colloquies.-J. W. W.

not fall in the battle as is recorded, but that he escaped, lived many years among his tenants in Witherslack, in Westmoreland, and was interred in the chapel there."Ibid. p. 210.

THE Woollen yarn spun by the country people in Broughton for sale used to produce more than £4000 a-year. Circiter 1774.-Ibid. p. 212.

TEA with itself has introduced wheaten bread.-Ibid. p. 213.

Iz. WALTON, p. 195, says of Winander Mere, that it is " some say, as smooth in the bottom as if it were paved with polished marble."

"THE Shepherd's Guide, or a Delineation of the Wool and Ear Marks on the different Stocks of Sheep in Patterdale, Grassmere, Hawkeshead, Langdale, Loughrigg, Wythburn, Legberthwaite, St. Johns, Wanthwaite and Burns, Borrowdale, Newlands, Threlkeld, Matterdale, Watermillock, Eskdale, and Wastdalehead.

"To which is prefixed an Index, shewing the proprietors' names and places of abode, with a description of the marks, &c. By William Mounsey and William Kirkpatrick, on the plan originally devised by Joseph

Walker.

"Penrith Printed by W. Stephen."
No date. 8vo.

THE original preface says "the success

this work has met with is sufficient to show the extensive benefit which is likely to result from it. It has not been presented to any sheep-breeder who has not considered it of the greatest importance.

"My object is to lay down a plan by which every man may have it in his power to know the owner of a strayed sheep, and to restore it to him; and, at the same time, that it may act as an antidote against the fraudulent practice too often followed,—in a word, to restore to every man his own. "I considered that the best mode of representing the wool and ear marks would

got rid of.

halved, under key-bitted or upper, holed, The ear is either cropt, under or upper muck-forked, or clicking-forked, marked with a three square hole, &c.; and these marks are varied, by being either on the cropt or otherwise entire ear.

The other marks have all their technical names.

The copy before me is one which my brother T. has borrowed from a neighbour. It is neatly bound in red sheep; and has pasted in it a printed paper with these words, "Newlands' Public Book."

The sheep are coloured according to the description, and a blank in the engraving left for the ears of one in each couple.

"THE Wells of rocky Cumberland

Have each a Saint or Patron, Who holds an annual festival The joy of maid and matron.

"And to this day as erst they wont,

The youths and maids repair
To certain wells on certain days
And hold a Revel there.
"Of sugar-sweet and liquorice,
With water from the spring,
They mix a pleasant beverage,
And May-Day carols sing."
MR. JOHN HUTCHINSON'S
June Days' Jingle.

By the public house in Newlands, there is a green cock-pit.

LOOKING down from Hindscarth upon Buttermere, the light fell so upon the lake that one part, which was in shade, appeared like a hole in it, or pit.

WHERE the hill has been burnt, the cranberry leaves are red.

THE Wooden railroad is said to have been first invented by Mr. Carlisle Spedding at Whitehaven. DR. DIXON'S Life of Dr. Brownrigg, p. 108.

-

IN Mrs. Wilson's youth it would have been thought a sin for any one to have sold honey in this place. It was given freely to any who happened to want it.

AMONG the Lansdowne MSS. (No. 17.7.) is a letter from Augsburg, written in Latin to the Lords Leicester and Burghley, by David Hang and John Languaver, co-partners with their Lordships in the mines at Keswick, concerning those mines. A.D. 1573. -Catal. p. 33.

Ibid. p. 37, No. 18. 51. ARTICLES proposed to the Lord Treasurer to be entered into with the Queen, by the Company of the mines at Keswick. A.D. 1574.

Ibid. p. 48, No. 24. 1. EDWARD BRADDYL to the Lord Treasurer, wanting to know what must be done with the Queen's copper in her store-house at Keswick. A.D. 1576.

MORE papers concerning these mines.P. 56, No. 28. 4-11.

Ibid. p. 115, No. 61. 69. LETTER describing something of the country and people near Kendal, to Lord Burghley.

Cotton MSS. Titus B. iii. 7. KESWICK mines.

THE parsonage house in Langdale was licensed as an alehouse, because it was so poor a living, that the Curate could not otherwise have supported himself.

Owen Lloyd who now holds the curacy

told me this.

"CARES and sorrows cast away, This is the old wives' holyday." BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, Women pleased, act v. sc. iii.

A LARGE leaved sort of clover, with a purple spot in the centre of the leaves, grows as a weed in this nursery garden,— the seed having been accidentally imported in some package from America.

JOHN EARSDEN and George Mason composed the music in a work entitled, "The Ayres that were sung and played at Brougham Castle in Westmoreland, in the King's entertainment, given by the Right Hon. the Earl of Cumberland, and his right noble son the Lord Clifford. Fol. London, 1618." -HAWKINS, vol. 4, p. 25.

Possibly here might be words by Daniel.

Tuesday, 19 Jan. 1836. I WENT out at one o'clock to shake hands with my old friend G. Peachy before his departure. It was a bright frosty day, and my Scotch bonnet afforded no shelter to my eyes, which are however now so used to it as not to be inconvenienced by the light. I was reading as usual, Clarke's Christiad1 was the

'I had the Christiad in hand at this time, and had written to Southey on the subject. This induced him to turn to it. The underwritten is from the fly-leaf of his copy transcribed into my own:- -"Robert Clarke, educated at the English College at Douay, where, as I am informed, he was Professor of the Classics, He after

book; and just on the rising ground where the view of the lake opens, the sun came I suppose more directly upon my eyelids, but the page appeared to be printed in red letters. The page before me was that on which the last book begins, and the heading is in larger type, these took the colour first, and were red as blood, the whole page presently became so. The opposite page had a confused intermixture of red and black types, when I glanced on it; but fixing the sight there the whole became rubric also, though there was nothing so vivid as in the heading of the book. The appearance passed away as my position with regard to the sun was altered.

I particularly noticed this phenomenon, which never occurred to me before, but which if I am not deceived I have read of more than once as something preternatural. An enthusiast according to the mood of mind would take it for a manifestation of grace or of wrath,-I think it has had the latter interpretation.

May 13, 1821. EARLY this morning, and more in a dream than awake, I fell into a train of fanciful thought, and ima

gined a great island in the Polar Sea,

which was the Kraken, or, as the earth itself has been supposed by some wild theorists, a living and sentient creature. That sort of perpetual creation which Azara supposes was going on there, and the Kraken had in later years pushed out heads and feelers from his upper as well as under surface. These were in various forms and kinds, graminivorous, frondivorous, carnivorous, and omnivorous. Among these varieties, some human heads appeared at last; and the Krakeners, in evil hour for them

selves, thought it a point of duty to educate their heads, and teach them to speak and to read or rather they took them

wards became a Carthusian Monk, and spent his leisure hours in an elaborate work, entitled Christiad." This meagre account is all that DODD gives (vol. 3, p. 311), and for this he referred to the Diary of Douay College, and the Diary of the Carthusians at Nieuport."-J. W. W.

more reasonably for their gods; and at length nothing was to be done without consulting them through the priests or Krakenpates. These heads being fixtures, and having no means of seeing things for themselves, believed of course what the krakenpates told them, but they had whims of their own also, and very seldom agreed,— and when they were out of humour, they could shake part of the body, and bring various evils upon the land, by the feelers, water, volcanoes, &c.

Something might be made of this.

KESWICK. 1808. Sept. 27. Snow on Helvellin, some was seen yesterday, and some last week.

Sept. 28. The snow continues there, and the frost in the night has killed all our nasturtiums,which were yesterday in full bloom and beauty. The potatoe tops also are withered and black. The lime at Jackson's new building here was frozen two inches deep, and one of the masons says there was ice an inch thick in a tin cup. The kidney beans also are killed, and made transparent by the frost.

killed in the garden. Walking out I obSept. 29. The sunflowers and hollyhocks served the ash leaves cut off and lying under the tree, before they had changed colour. The sycamore had lost some leaves in the

same manner, but not so many. The elder berries were all killed. Snow fell upon all the mountains, and there was ice in the boat.

Sept. 30. The sweet-peas and china-asters killed, a few of the latter which were more sheltered have escaped.

Oct. 30. What a morning! hard frost, bright sunshine, and a wind not perceptible otherwise than by its keen coldness, bending the smoke of the newly kindled fires, which has risen high through the stillness, — and blending it with the mist which runs under the mountains, beginning at Thornthwate, till it comes round under Wallow and meets

the smoke of the town: the fell summit shining above it in sunshine.

1809. June 2. Snow upon all the hills and the vale of St. John's covered with it: a thing never before remembered. Within a fortnight grass which had then been buried beneath the snow, was mown.

Nov. 3. The first effect of winter upon the flowers, the nasturtiums just touched by the frost.

Nov. 10. The first.

1833. Sept. 1. Cucumbers on the frame, vegetable marrows, and such kidney beans as were not sheltered from the east, cut off by frost.

Monday, 24th Oct. 1836. LEFT Keswick with Karl in the stage. Found the squaw in it, and dropt her at what used to be John Stanley's-the public house in Legberthwaite. No other passenger the whole way. They have played the Quaker with Ivy Cottage. Saw Wordsworth and Mr. Robinson in Ambleside. Took our places for Liverpool at the Commercial Inn, Kendal, and slept there.

Tuesday, 25th. Called at half-past four. Two heads are better than one, said a man who was assisting to pack the coach, and to enforce the remark he added, I had rather have two sovereigns than one. I dissented from the opinion, and reminded Karl | of Eteocles and Polynices,-for we had been reading the Thebaid.

Set off half-past five by moonlight. A man in the coach talked about Bishop Watson, and said that when a school-boy at Hensingham, his schoolfellows used to laugh at him for coming in a homespun coat and clogs, and gave him some nickname in consequence. I cannot think the clogs would have exposed him to any ridicule in this country, and especially at that time.

They allow only ten minutes for break

Passed Hesketh Hall, and in the adjacent village was recognized to our mutual surprize by Mr. Hodgeson, John Wordsworth's late curate, who had recently removed to this place. He introduced me to Mr. Addington, who was going to Liverpool on his way to London, a very agreeable, gentlemanly, well informed man, a friend of Mrs. Charles Warren. He told me that Sharpe had left his sister-in-law only £50 a year! It ought to have been £500.

Reached Liverpool a little after three, and finding no place could be taken for Ellesmere till to-morrow evening, off we set for the Birkenhead steamer, and at half-past five were packed up in the mail for Chester. We had a very intelligent companion upon the stage, a most incurious one from Lancaster. He was a person in business at Liverpool, who had never been to London, nor indeed fifty miles from home, except once, for a fortnight to the Isle of Man by the steamer. He works in a counter from morning to night, and is evidently killing himself thereby but broad hints and good plain advice seemed to be bestowed upon him in vain.

Tuesday, 25th. Our way into the inn was up a flight of steps, and then across one of those rows which make Chester one of the most remarkable cities in England It is a large old rambling house, and our bedroom was so far back that we were not molested by any noise from the street. The gas was so offensive in the public room that we could not endure it.

Walked round the walls before breakfast.