As I am now detailing my “Impressions of England,” I must leave out my Scottish chapters, for Scotland is far too rich in material to be smuggled into the world under any cover except its own. After a most interesting visit to this romantic land, I again saw England as I approached the Cumberland mountains, at Ecclefechan, and in spite of my delight in Caledonia, I somehow felt that it was home. I reached “Gretna Green” from a direction the opposite of that which is the fashion for runaways, and hence saw nothing of “the blacksmith;” but I was informed that he duly posts himself at the station when the train approaches from the other direction, and very frequently finds customers. It is not now as in the days of posting; and if a brace of lovers can make sure of a train in advance of pursuers, they are quite safe. The next train may bring the frantic friends and parents; but the wedding is already performed, according to the barbarous law of North Britain. It has been remarked as something singular, if not disgraceful, that several who have risen to be Lord-Chancellors of the southern kingdom, were, in early life, married in this way. After a moment’s pause at the Gretna station, we were whirled across the Sark, with a glimpse of the Solway, and soon I was in “merrie Carlisle.” I entered it, thanks be to Bishop Percy, with special thoughts of “Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee.” The poetry of the town is, in fact, concentrated in that ballad of ballads. As a border town, it has always been subject to those fearful scenes and tragedies, which only war creates: and its history is a romance, from the days of the Conquest to those of the Pretender, whose flag once waved on its walls. It is charmingly situated, and well watered by its three rivers; but its castle and its cathedral are its chief objects of interest, and offer little that can be described with effect, after a review of more striking specimens of their kind. Among the tombs in the latter, is that of Archdeacon Paley, the _moralist_, who “could not afford to keep a conscience.” I did not regard it with any great emotion. The adjacent Deanery, at one time inhabited by Bishop Percy, was more interesting to me, for whatever he may have been as a bishop, I cannot doubt that his taste and industry in literature have produced a vast result in the poetry and letters of his native tongue. I have often amused myself, not only with his “ballads” themselves, but with an effort to trace their immediate and remote effects on the taste, and even upon the genius of England. They are very striking, and prove what may be the lasting results of a very humble sort of literary enterprise, when it is founded on “truths that wake to perish never.”