with feet, knees, or hands. There is nothing
to grasp; and the grass is shiny as satin.
If they join hands, they go down only the faster.
They drive their toes into the ground, and
rest on their poles. Now they try again.
Worse and worse! Now they scramble,
using all their resources, and achieve two or
three feet of ascent; only to slide down half-
a-dozen. Their shoe-soles must be like satin
by this time. They must take their chance
of getting safe to the bottom, and make one
slide of it. So we think; but they do not.
By the time we have dined, one of them has
sidled to a patch of gravel, whence she can
extend aid to her companion. When they
are on the stony path, how they step on,
enjoying the security, and roughening their
shoe-soles as they go!

How happy every body looks! the elderly
lady with her newspaper under the tree; the
pretty girl in the riding-habit, with her pocket-
handkerchief tied about her throat, as, heated
by her ride, she comes up into the wind; the
pale gentleman, who takes the short cuts up
the hill, instead of following the zigzag. He
brought the pale face with him, no doubt;
but hardly that springy step. And there is
a cheerful granny, knitting in the sunshine,
while that unparalleled creature, her first
grandchild, tottles and topples on a safe piece
of level grass. How many women, young
and old, are sewing or knitting in the open
air! And in the cool chamber at St. Ann's
Well, where the water is trickling into the
marble basin, sits another, plying her needle,
while enjoying pious conversation with a lady
who has some tracts in her hand. They are
saying, how very "'andsome" the clergyman
was that preached last Sunday. We leave
these sedentary people behind us, and rove
where we shall meet the rovers. While
dining, we surveyed the vast expanse through
which the Severn winds to the south-west,
and where we can descry Worcester in one
direction, and see in another the smoke
which indicates Gloucester, and some glittering
appearance, which we are told is Cheltenham.
Now we turn our backs on this, and
walk a mile through the serpentine valley, to
see what the other side of the range will
show.

When we come out upon that glorious view,
we find a little party of Scotch ladies, pleasant
and kind, who show us the Bristol Channel,
a bright line issuing from behind
faraway hills; and Welsh mountains, cloudlike,
but well-defined, through an atmosphere reeking
with heat. While we sit, picking out
churches and gentlemen's seats, and tracing
roads, and envying the dwellers in nestling
farm-houses, and counting ponds (because the
complaint of the fastidious is of want of
water in the landscape), and laughing at the
ploughing (four bullocks, two horses, and four
men and boys to a plough), the Scotch party
think "it is very warm, certainly," but that
they must "just go over the hill." They
will not stop short of the beacon, we think.
It is only half-a-mile off; steep, certainly,
but only half-a-mile. At all events, we go.

When there, and leaning against the pole,
and remembering how many hats have been
blown either into Herefordshire or
Worcestershire, we inquire for a wind. See there!
there is a little girl actually weighing snuff
in her tiny scales of gourd-skin, balanced upon
a forked stick stuck in the ground. Not a
grain flies off to set anybody sneezing. Who
comes here for snuff? The mother, sitting
with her face to the north, to make a shadow
to sew in, may sell cakes and fruit; but who
would come one thousand three hundred feet
above the level of the sea for snuff?—this
being, moreover, the most windy point in the
county. It cannot be snuff that these very small
bees have come hither for; these little, dusty-
looking, fawn-coloured bees; and these tiny
red-and-black butterflies. Why are they here?
We have left the blossoming gorse far below;
and the foxgloves are lower still; yet there
are bees resting on my companion's bonnet,
and butterflies flapping their wings on the
stones of the crumbling mound.

There go the swallows, sending specks of
shadow skimming down the slopes. We shall
see more of them, no doubt, in the dewy
morning, to-morrow. And look, what a noble
pair of hawks! Their brown plumage and
the outline of head and beak are wonderfully
distinct against the sky, in such a light as
this. Now they quiver in one spot of air for
a minute together; and then they swoop
majestically, and rise to quiver again. Where
is the doomed mouse that the nearest seems
to have fixed its eye on? Will it not have
the sense to run in under the gorse, as I saw
one do, as we came up the hill? There are
many mice here, I see; and that is why we
are treated with this show of balancing and
wheeling hawks.

Those who want shade here must bring
umbrellas. There are only scraps of shade
anywhere about, and those are taken possession
of by the sheep; except one, where I saw
a baby laid, for its noon-day nap. The sheep
huddle in, and coil themselves up like dogs.
They look so sleepy, that we are sorry to
disturb them. We say so, in the civilest
manner, but they will not trust us, but go
leaping and trotting away into the sun.
Perhaps they will come back to their sofas
when our backs are turned.

For some time, as we walk southwards
along the ridge, the grass has been growing
thinner; and now we have really rough
walking on broken rock. This is an
adventurous lady on her donkey, at such a height,
on such a ridge, among these débris. What
is her child asking, that toddling two-year-
old? "Who made all this mess?" My dear
little fellow, what an irreverent question!
He will not find that out; for his mother
cannot answer him for laughing. His father
informs him that we cannot always tell how