He lay in no cloister, chancel, or vault. Verdant was his grave. An evergreen was the curtain of his little bed, and the feet of birds were all that trod upon the flowery sod. * * * * * Reader, wilt thou for the sake of the aged Chronicler, pay one visit to “Mab’s Cross?” If so, go at earliest morn, or latest eve, and all noise and bustle being hushed, your thoughts may pass over centuries, and return invested with the remembrance of Magdalene Montfort, and Mabel Bradshaigh. The cross stands apparently no greater object of interest, than an indifferent structure of three stones. Yet, when the beautiful Mabel did penance there, flowers were growing around its sides. And even, for four generations after, a small plot of grass was trimmed and cultivated around it. But when Wigan became the seat of the civil wars in Lancashire, Mab’s Cross being considered as a popish relic, a tooth of the beast, suffered at the hands of Roundheads. It has since been reconstructed, but stands entirely destitute of ornament, on or around it. LANCASTER CASTLE [Illustration] “A TRADITION PREVAILS THAT THIS FORTRESS HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY TAKEN BY CROMWELL, AND THAT HE PLANTED HIS CANNON ON A CIRCULAR MOUNT AT THE SOUTH-WEST SIDE OF THE TOWN, ON HILL MEADOW.”--_Baines’s History of Lancashire._ Well does Lancaster deserve the name which the Romans gave to it, of the green city; and the beautiful scenery, for many miles around, may be considered as its delightful gardens. There are no huge rocks frowning, like tyrants, in the country which they have ruined, and blighting with sickness and poverty, all that is healthful and rich. Such mountain scenery only affords an observatory, whence we may gaze into the distance, upon other and more charming spots,--the home-glens of the happy and free--where every noise, even of the world, is hushed into sweetness, and the forest of the recluse and the hunter, where light and shade, all the day, agree to make a religious twilight. Often has the wanderer, on the majestic hills of Cumberland, looked down in rapture upon the north coast of Lancashire, stretching out like a gentle surface and web of ether, on which, at sunset, the shades fall, as if they were kindred to each other.