but Fingal. He studies Croma (who now knows Croma even by name?), and picks out the finest phrase in it as though he were criticising a book of the 'Iliad.' The Ossian fever was symptomatic of a widely-spread sentiment or fashion, due to causes far more general than the influence of any individual. It would be easy enough to show that worshippers of the picturesque had discovered the chief beauties of England before Gray wrote his letters. The tourist was already abroad. When Gray visited Gordale Scar, in Craven, he already found landscape-painters settled at the neighbouring inn and preparing views for the engraver. The reader of that maddest of books, 'John Buncle,' may remember that the hero contrives at one place to emerge out of a mysterious cavern in the mountains of Westmoreland. He observes on the occasion that the Vale of Keswick is considered to offer the finest views in England, and that they were, in truth, finer than even the Rev. Dr. Dalton had been able to make them appear in his descriptive poem. Yet Buncle thinks that Keswick is surpassed by the 'shaded fells' in the neighbourhood (apparently) of Ambleside, and that the cascades there are superior to 'dread Lodore.' The 'Rev. Dr. Dalton' appears to have published his poem—a poem, I am sorry to say, unfamiliar to me—in 1755, some years before Gray's visit. But it is needless to enlarge upon this point. It is clear enough, from many symptoms, that the love of picturesque scenery was becoming fashionable in the middle of the century, and that Gray, as a man of taste, was amongst the first to feel the impulse.