excellence, and partly because the tincture of contrariety in our nature ever inclines us to enact the perverse critic, when called on to be the implicit votary. This in common with most others I have often felt, but rarely more so than during a casual residence some short time since among the little celebrated, and therefore perhaps a little more charming, mountain scenery of the county, which either has been, or might be, called Leitrim of the Lakes; for a tract more pleasantly diversified with well-set sheets of water, it would I think be difficult to name. Almost every hill you top has its still and solitary tarn, and almost every amphitheatre you enter, encompasses its wild and secluded lake--not seldom bearing on its placid bosom some little islet, linked with the generations past, by monastic or castellated ruins, as its seclusion or its strength may have invited the world-wearied anchorite to contemplation, or the predatory chieftain to defence. On such a remote and lonely spot I lately chanced to alight, in the course of a long summer day’s ramble among the heights and hollows of that lofty range which for a considerable space abuts upon the borders of Sligo and Roscommon. The ground was previously unknown to me, and with all the zest which novelty and indefiniteness can impart, I started staff in hand with the early sun, and ere the mists had melted from the purple heather of their cloud-like summits, was drawing pure and balmy breath within the lonely magnificence of the hills. About noon, as I was casting about for some pre-eminently happy spot to fling my length for an hour or two’s repose, I reached the crest of a long gradual ascent that had been some time tempting me to look what lay beyond; and surely enough I found beauty sufficient to dissolve my weariness, had it been tenfold multiplied, and to allay my pulse, had it throbbed with the vehemence of fever. An oblong valley girdled a lovely lake on every side; here with precipitous impending cliffs, and there with grassy slopes of freshest emerald that seemed to woo the dimpling waters to lave their loving margins, and, as if moved with a like impulse, the little wavelets met the call with the gentle dalliance of their ebb and flow. A small wooded island, with its fringe of willows trailing in the water, stood about a furlong from the hither side, and in the centre of its tangled brake, my elevation enabled me to descry what I may call the remnants of a ruin--for so far had it gone in its decay--here green, there grey, as the moss, the ivy, or the pallid stains of time, had happened to prevail. A wild duck, with its half-fledged clutch, floated fearless from its sedgy shore. More remote, a fishing heron stood motionless on a stone, intent on its expected prey; and the only other animated feature in the quiet scene was a fisherman who had just moored his little boat, and having settled his tackle, was slinging his basket on his arm and turning