are scattered so abundantly throughout England, that we only note them by their loss' when we visit other countries, where, however novel, all things must seem barren by comparison.

6

Ross has been rendered remarkable: it has a reputation that will live as long as our land's language;' a reputation created by the actual as well as the ideal; an immortality founded by a good man, and celebrated by a man of genius, who honoured himself while honouring the right.' Yet it can boast of little historic interest; but for the Man who has made it worldfamous, it would have no other claim to celebrity than that which it derives from beauty of situation. The streets are all more or less upon acclivities, and are narrow and antique-looking, with many a gabled roof and bit of old carving or ornamental plaster-work upon time-worn fronts. The markethouse is a study worthy of the artist; it is in a very decayed state, and is supported by columns of red sandstone, which have succumbed to the

action of the weather so considerably that it looks as if it had been erected in the time of the Saxons rather than that of Charles II., in whose comparatively modern days it was constructed. Upon a market-day, when it is crowded with the peasantry from the neighbouring forest of Dean, that primitive and almost unvisited district, the scene is most picturesque and unsophisticated. No railways run near the town, and the heavily laden coach, as it winds its slow way up the street beside the market-place, does not jar with the old-world association of a scene which seems rather to belong to the last century than to our own.

*

The town of Ross is celebrated for the especial purity of its air, and for the longevity of its inhabitants; and the visitor who rambles in its church-yard will meet with many inscriptions, recording the memory of those who had attained their eightieth, ninetieth, and even one hundredth year.

The entire aspect of Ross is that of a quiet mountain home. The shopkeepers seem to conduct their business in the simplest and plainest manner, without bustle, but with a due amount of attention. Carts jog quietly up and down the inclined planes called streets. People walk on the kerb or in the road at their own sweet will,' and encounter none of the dangers of the tumultuous thoroughfares of London. There is a serenity

* The church is a spacious and beautiful building, with a tower and elegant spire, for which it is indebted to 'the Man' whose body rests within its walls. Beside the pew which he used, trees have forced their way beneath the window in the wall, and grow with great luxuriance withinside the church, nearly covering the glass. They are two slight and elegant elms which wave their branches over his pew, and which are regarded with much veneration. The local legend is, that some years ago a rector impiously cut down some of John Kyrle's favourite trees, with which he had adorned the chuchyard, and which grew outside the window and immediately opposite to his pew, and that thereupon they threw out fresh shoots, which forced their way withinside the church, under the wall, and grew in the pew of him who planted them, where they have been suffered to remain and expand. Not a branch of these trees grows without the church, but they luxuriate within it; reaching nearly to the ceiling, and closely clinging with their branches to the window-glass. They are carefully preserved and venerated; and the singularity of their position and history is remarked by all. The other windows contain many fragments of old glass. There are several fine monuments in the church to the Rudhall family, who were the ancient proprietors of the manor of Rudhall, in this neighbourhood. The recumbent figures of Judge Rudhall and his lady, of the time of Henry VII., and the martial effigy of Sir Richard Rudhall, who was knighted at Cadiz in the reign of Elizabeth, are fine specimens of the art of sculpture in those days.

S

about life in these country towns of which those in populous city pent' have no notion; people do not rush along the path of life as if death were at their heels, and there was literally no time for thought or the enjoyment of existence. The clear well-opened eye, the ruddy cheek and fresh bright lips of rural health, tell of the absence of care and thought: if there is less evidence of intelligence and the knowledge of life which is seen in the haggard eye of the manufacturer, or the worn and anxious look of the pallid artisan, there is more of peace and contentment, and above all, of health, in those of the tiller of the soil.

We do not contend for the palm of intellect for our rural population: they are heavy, the men especially so, and hard to move, and their qualities and virtues are in the general way rather negative than active. But the sloth has always been transformed into the lion when a great occasion summoned the peasant from his cottage to protect his country and defend its liberty; then other lights dance in his blue eyes; a deeper colour mantles his ruddy cheek; it is glorious to recal what English peasants effected when they rose against ship-money, and compelled justice to do her duty. Certainly there is a distressing contrast between the physical appearance of the Men' of Ross, and those of our close manufacturing districts; the anxious look and bloodshot eye, that rests ever on machinery and rarely sees a flower or a leaf; the half-numbed ear, that hears no song of bird, save from within those rusty bars upon which even a defiled sunbeam seldom rests; the sunken cheek, telling of hard labour and privation; the narrow chest, never expanded by the fresh breeze of the hill; the limbs more than half deformed, during an infancy spent in bending over the frame of some overgrown manufactory,—all tell the dismal story of eternal toils. The peasant has innumerable blessings which, however unconsciously he may enjoy them, contribute to that health of body and placidity of spirit, the latter of which tends to create a heavy indifference to passing events, which the keen and hungry-eyed manufacturer is driven by necessity, as well as by habit, to attend to. The peasant has fresh pure air; he lives in constant communion with Nature; by attention the small garden can be rendered a source of profit and enjoyment; he has frequently the consciousness that those in better circumstances, placed as the world calls it, 'above him,' take an interest in his temporal and spiritual affairs. In all our agricultural

districts, schools have multiplied, and efforts are at last making by those who ought to have made them long ago, to rouse a spirit that will send labourers from the beautiful fields of our pastoral districts into the vineyard of our Lord. No one who has lived pent up in the close city, and is able to leave its feverish excitements,-its noise,-its atmosphere, laden with pestilence, for the tranquillity of the country, but must feel renewed existence at being permitted to breathe the air in which the lark sings, and which gives voice to the nightingale.

There are few things that so purify and uplift the spirit, as the consideration of that which mere WILL can achieve, even when unaided by what we consider wealth-wealth! which renders charity of such easy and happy performance, that the wonder is, how men so underrate the power it gives in creating happiness and conferring the enduring immortality of benevolence, as to abstain from its bestowal in the service of fellow-creatures; yet nearly all our large charities have been originated by persons of great

minds, but small means. And the only regret we can have in contemplating the noble monuments to humanity which are upspringing around us, is that in accordance-and an evil accordance it is-with the taste of the

times, there is too much money expended in decoration. Public charity should dwell within walls of severe simplicity, where show should be sacrificed to comfort. Pope, refined as was his taste, was of this opinion when he wrote his encomium on John Kyrle, The Man of Ross,'

Exactly opposite the market-place, and in the narrowest part of the town, still stands the house of John Kyrle, the world-famous Man of Ross.' It is a plain building situated on the slope of the hill, and was a few years ago used as an inn, known by the sign of the King's Arms. While the house was an inn, it was visited by Coleridge, and he commemorated his sojourn here in some beautiful and touching lines. It has since undergone alterations, and is now converted into a bookseller's shop. The adjoining house, now a chemist's, appears to have originally been a part of the building, and is ornamented with a plaster medallion representing in the centre the Man of Ross.'* It is inscribed with Kyrle's name, and with the cognomen Pope has made more famous; and on a band beneath is given the date of his decease-' Died November 7th, 1724, Aged 84.'

The house bears traces of antiquity in the carved brackets and the massive wood-work which decorate the interior. Our cut shows the gallery that runs along the first floor, and the reader will remark the solid beams upon which the ceiling rests. The carved arch over the staircase, as well as some other bits' of the original work, would lead to the conjecture that it was constructed in the middle of the seventeenth

He wears a flowing wig and long neckcloth, but the likeness appears to be but a very unsatisfactory one, inasmuch as it is a poor work of art. In the Beauties of England and Wales,' mention is made of a tolerable portrait' preserved here when the house was an inn; it is not here now, but the original is said to have been in the possession of Lord Muncaster. All the portraits now sold here seem to lack vraisemblance.