surface of what is called a ground-fast stone. For two centuries it was open to the blast and the rain; but has long since been protected within a little building opening from the hall of the Lodge. The inscription is thus deciphered by Mr. Hunter: of the said lands and demesnes, which he now holds as their right heir. About a bowshot from thence (by the descent of as many rings of a ladder) his Worship brought me to a cave or vault in a rock, wherein was a table with seats and turf cushions round, and in a hole in the same rock was three barrels of nappy liquor. Thither the keeper brought a good red-deer pie, cold roast mutton, and an excellent shoeing-horn of hanged Martinmas beef: which cheer no man living would think such a place could afford: so after some the forthe Rychard therd Hare the vii. & Hare viii. merry passages and repast, we returned home.” Prap for the Saule of Thomas Wryttelay Knyght for the Kyngys bode to Edward hows Saules Eod perdon wyche Thomas cawsyd a loge to be made hon this crag in mydys of Wanclife for his plesor to her the hartes bel in the pere of owr Lord a thousand_eeeee.p. The The Lodge which Sir Thomas Wortley took John Taylor to see, "where the keeper dwells who is his man," is now also tenanted by a keeper. It is built on the very edge of the rock,-a comfortable looking yeoman's house, with slight appearance of antiquity. The chief living room of the family is of large di- The stone is about twelve feet long by six wide. The mensions-probably the hall. The upper rooms are Sir Thomas Wortley, who "caused a lodge to be made spacious. Some thirty or forty years ago the Countess on this crag in midst of Wancliffe for his pleasure to Erne was the occupant of this unpretending house. hear the harts bell," was high-sheriff of York in the About that time, Mrs. Mary Sterndale, of Sheffield-time of Henry VII.,‚—a man of might and worship. We the friend of Anna Seward-described the Lodge at have a love for the old knight, who could, in an age Wharncliffe in a work entitled 'The Life of a Boy.' when the poetry of real life was slightly regarded, leave She calls it "a house, humble as is its external his state to dwell amidst solitary rocks, and have his appearance, exceeding in grandeur of situation the pleasure in listening to the deep bell of the stag in palaces of kings." She approached the house by a the autumn twilight. We do not believe, according to little platform of turf on the very verge of the precipice, the record of Mr. Oliver Heywood, of Coley, near and peeping through a half glass door, saw the home Halifax, made two hundred years after the old knight delights of its tenant. "A nice spinning-wheel, the was gone to his account, that he was "the Dragon of primitive employ of ladies, coeval with the house, was Wantley" who was slain by More of More-Hall. there; a cheerful fire, a reading table, with chairs reverend Oliver, whom Mr. Hunter once believed in, around it, and cases containing books, combined with but subsequently doubted, thus records a traditional the view it commanded to render this the sweetest spot reproach of Sir Thomas :-"Sir Francis Wortley's I ever saw." The spinning-wheel and the books are great grandfather being a man of a great estate, was gone. They have vanished, as well as the "red-deer owner of a town near unto him, only there were some pie" and the "Martinmas beef," of the days of the freeholders in it, with whom he wrangled and sued until Water-Poet. Elegance no longer presides over the he had beggared them and cast them out of their inhedomestic arrangments of Wharncliffe Lodge, nor does ritance, and so the town was wholly his, which he pulled the ancient hospitality receive the stranger, under the quite down, and laid the buildings and town-fields even administration of a keeper who "were an ass if he as a common; wherein his main design was to keep would want venison." But here the spirit of enjoy-deer: and made a lodge to which he came at the time ment, cheaply purchased, is still alive. Here come the holiday parties by the ready railway from Sheffield; and "the cup that cheers but not inebriates" is prepared by a smiling matron in her spacious kitchen, or in her grander upper-rooms. When the hawthorn is powdered in the woods, and breathes its fragrance into every gale, come happy Whitsun revellers here to laugh and loiter-perchance to feel how pure and simple are the pleasures of life's feast when nature is permitted to deck the board. When the clustering nuts hang upon the bough, and the bilberry offers its genial fruit to the eager gathering of happy childhood, there will be trespassing in these woods-but wink at the trespassers, ye who are their guardians. Places such as these are made to keep alive the singleness of heart which "the busy haunts of men" too often corrupt. The "large inscription engraven," which John Taylor noticed, is still preserved, and is very nearly legible still. It was cut on the living rock, on the upper of the year and lay there, taking great delight to hear the deer bell. But it came to pass that before he died he belled like a deer, and was distracted. Some rubbish there may be seen of the town: it is upon a great moor between Penistone and Sheffield." There are many of our readers who have not read 'The Dragon of Wantley.' We would not recommend it to our fair friends to read, albeit it is printed in the Right Reverend Bishop of Dromore's 'Reliques of Antient English Poetry.' But we will give them a sample or two of this marvellous performance, having a loca interest. We may doubt, with Mr. Holland, whether the scene is laid here-if Wantley be Wharncliffe; but we cannot doubt that the scene is near More Hall' and Sheffield.' "In Yorkshire, near fair Rotherham, Some two or three miles, or thereabouts, But there is a hedge, just on the hill edge, And Matthew's house hard by it; O there and then was this dragon's den, "Old stories tell how Hercules A dragon slew at Lerna, With seven heads and fourteen eyes, To see and well discern-a: But he had a club, this dragon to drub, Or he had ne'er done it, I warrant ye: But More of More-Hall, with nothing at all, He slew the dragon of Wantley." "But first he went, new armour to Bespeak at Sheffield town; With spikes all about, not within but without, Of steel so sharp and strong; Both behind and before, arms, legs, and all o'er, Some five or six inches long." his "good red-deer pie," and quaffed his "nappy liquor," did the fearful beast curl his wicked tail, and glare upon virgins with his fiery eyes. The prospect must always have been fine enough to melt even a dragon's heart into some touch of humanity. He must have been gazing on it in poetical abstraction, when More of More Hall came suddenly upon his lair. To the west is a sea of wood, beneath which the Don glides. Glancing over pleasant hills, the dark moorlands of Yorkshire are in the distance. In the centre of the view is a wide valley, through which a little river threads; and two noble hills which front us boldly with their "barren breasts," stretch away into the southern distance, where they also melt into black moorlands. One more fragment-a description of the Dragon To the East is the valley of the Loxley—a cultivated and his doings-and we have done. "This dragon had two furious wings, Each one upon each shoulder; He had long claws, and in his jaws * "Devoured he poor children three, That could not with him grapple; And at one sup he ate them up, As one would eat an apple. All sorts of cattle this dragon did eat; Some say he ate up trees; And that the forests sure he would Devour up by degrees. For houses and churches were to him geese and turkeys; But some stones, dear Jack, that he could not crack, Dr. Percy, in the 'Reliques,' acquiesces in the common account that "this ballad alludes to a contest at law between an overgrown Yorkshire attorney and a neighbouring gentleman. The former, it seems, had stript three orphans of their inheritance, and by his encroachments and rapaciousness was become a nuisance to the whole country; when the latter generously espoused the cause of the oppressed, and gained a complete victory over his antagonist, who with mere spite and vexation broke his heart." It is wearisome to follow the conjectures upon conjectures of the origin of this ballad, or its precise date. Perhaps, after all, it was nothing more than a clever burlesque upon the old ballads and romances of chivalry; written in good humour over a social glass at 'More Hall,' a comfortable old house on the opposite bank under Wharncliffe. The whole thing looks to us wonderfully like a freak of clever Charles Cotton, come out of his sweet valley of the Dove to visit a brother angler of the Don. So there is another conjecture. And now, thus refreshed with some antiquarianism that has a little fun in it, let us wend our way along the noble road to Wortley, carried through the woods under the brow of the craggy hill. But first let us pause to receive into our minds the complete splendour of the prospect from the highest brow of Wharncliffe Crags. We are just above the 'Dragon's Cave.' Then the Dragon has a traditional cave. In the vault in the rock" where honest John Taylor discussed 66 and beautiful tract. Over all the immediate scene are scattered fine plantations of birch, and pine, and oak: and at this early season, with occasional sunlight dancing upon the young leaves of the birch, whilst the oak is bare, and the larch scarcely green, there is that delicacy of colour which the spring only can show, and which (its promise has something to do with the matter) imparts as deep a pleasure as the pomp of autumn. Now we proceed with our walk. We are some thirty or forty feet under the crest of the hill. We are amongst the Crags, piled up here from ages unnumbered. These masses of rock are clothed with living beauty. They are themselves storehouses of imperfect vegetation. Lichens, of many species, cover their smooth or angular surfaces, and produce that variety of colour which some have called 'time-stains.' Out of the interstices of these rocks spring tall treessome the growth of a generation, some that have wrestled with the wintry blast for two or three centuries. What a contrast to the belling of the hart is the whistle of the locomotive! We see not the train, but there is no other earthly noise like that whistle. Well! it disturbs us not. "Bubbling runnels join the sound." Their music is constant; the discord was but for a moment. The cuckoo's voice is heard, too, for the first time this year. Sit down and listen. And now for a stiff walk through twilight groves to Wortley village. Prettily is that church of Wortley situate on the gentle hill. The foot-path through these green meadows is very pleasant. But the snug parlour of the 'Wortley Arms' inn is quite as agreeable, after a walk of six hours. We ever advise pedestrians to have a dinner in prospect at the end of a dozen miles. No makebelieves of sandwiches or biscuits will satisfy us. It is part of the poetry of the walk to dine, and to rest luxuriously after labour. "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Trouble not yourself about the fare to be found. There is always the best in a country hostel. Eggs and bacon-to name them is provocative of appetite. We dine at the 'Wortley Arms;' we return to Sheffield by the railroad at set of sun. We go not into the church, or rather chapel-of-ease. It is not inviting. It is the bald thing of beautification miscalled Gothic. We are too tired to look upon Wortley Hall. We will dream of Wharncliffe and Wharncliffe only. Well! the day is nearly spent. We must away to the railway-station. Positively, the situation of this station is beautiful. The Don beneath; bold woods in front; an arm of the river coming broadly from the inland,—no doubt a brawling brook upward, and here making a little lake; a bright line of stepping-stones crossing its shallows, and showing us a touch of human affection in the stalwart countryman who is tenderly helping a little girl over the slippery path. That gleam of yellow light, too, upon that white-blossomed cherrytree-and-the train is here! In two minutes we are talking of the price of cattle and the rise in wheat. There is much knowledge to be picked up in a second class railway-carriage, where the farmer and the tradesman are not bound up in those horrid conventionalities which make the would-be-genteel afraid to speak to each other. Never mind. Even the parvenus will grow wiser some day, and learn to be frank, and manly, and inquiring, from those they think beneath them who are beginning to know realities from shadows. The train is at Sheffield. We shall remember this spring walk through Wharn cliffe. There are little accidental effects of loveliness which sometimes present themselves during such a day as this, undefinable, not to be described, but never to be forgotten. Sheffield's own beautiful poet, in his verses, 'The Little Cloud '-verses suggested by remembrances of Wharncliffe has described such an accidental heightening of the ordinary charms of a noble landscape. We adopt his sentiment: "The day on which that cloud appear'd, |