valleys and vistas of which goes the railroad, with dells diverging from
it on either hand, and streams and arched bridges, and old villages, and
a hundred pleasant English sights. After passing Rochdale, however, the
dreary monotony of Lancashire succeeded this variety. Between nine and
ten o'clock I reached the Tithebarn station in Liverpool. Ever since
until now, May 17th, I have employed my leisure moments in scribbling off
the journal of my tour; but it has greatly lost by not having been
written daily, as the scenes and occurrences were fresh. The most
picturesque points can be seized in no other way, and the hues of the
affair fade as quickly as those of a dying dolphin; or as, according to
Audubon, the plumage of a dead bird.

One thing that struck me as much as anything else in the Highlands I had
forgotten to put down. In our walk at Balloch, along the road within
view of Loch Lomond and the neighboring hills, it was a brilliant
sunshiny afternoon, and I never saw any atmosphere so beautiful as that
among the mountains. It was a clear, transparent, ethereal blue, as
distinct as a vapor, and yet by no means vaporous, but a pure,
crystalline medium. I have witnessed nothing like this among the
Berkshire hills nor elsewhere.

York is full of old churches, some of them very antique in appearance,
the stones weather-worn, their edges rounded by time, blackened, and with
all the tokens of sturdy and age-long decay; and in some of them I
noticed windows quite full of old painted glass, a dreary kind of minute
patchwork, all of one dark and dusty hue, when seen from the outside.
Yet had I seen them from the interior of the church, there doubtless
would have been rich and varied apparitions of saints, with their glories
round their heads, and bright-winged angels, and perhaps even the
Almighty Father himself, so far as conceivable and representable by human