We crossed a grassy plain, shaded by oaks and covered with grazing cattle, to the rocks I have mentioned, in which the pale green veins show the existence of copper. They rise out of a lofty hanging wood of old beeches, and are crowned at their summits with black firs, the whole effect of which is most striking. In this natural wall is a grotto, which, after climbing wearily along a zig-zag path in the wood, you reach through a dark covered way more than a hundred feet long, hewn in the rock. The grotto consists of numerous caverns incrusted with all sorts of minerals. There are small openings in which are set pieces of coloured glass cut like brilliants; in the dark they gleam like the precious stones of Aladdin's cave. An old woman was our guide, and excited our wonder by her unwearied walking, and the dexterity with which she climbed up and down the rocks in slippers. The irregular steps of stone were as smooth as glass, and so difficult sometimes to pass over, that our good R----, who had iron heels to his boots, complained bitterly of the efforts he had to make to keep himself up. We reached a summer-house, built of trunks and branches of trees and covered with moss, which commanded a picturesque view of a fantastic hill called the Temple of Patience. Our way then led us to the so-called Swiss Bridge, which is boldly thrown from one rock to another. As the railing is partly broken down and the passage rather a dizzy one, my good Julia, if it were possible for her to have come thus far, would have found an end to her expedition. How fortunate it is to have such an unwearied guide through the regions of imagination--one who bears you in an instant across the giddy bridge, and now places you before a black tower-like rock projecting out of the glittering beeches, overgrown with thorns and festooned with garlands of ivy! This was long the abode of a fox, who lived secure from pursuit in his castle of Malapartus; it is still called Reynard's House. We went on, up hill and down dale, and at length, rather tired, reached the terrace, an open place with beautiful peeps at the country cut in the wood. Not far from thence, behind very high trees, stands a column a hundred-and-twenty feet high, dedicated to the founder of the family,--a London merchant and Lord Mayor of London in the time of Henry the Third,--whose statue crowns the pillar. A convenient winding staircase in the inside leads to its summit, whence you overlook the panorama of fifteen counties already mentioned. You pass through still wider chasms between the rocks to a lovely cottage, standing in complete seclusion at the end of a green valley, where formerly various beasts and birds were kept, which are now preserved stuffed in a room of the cottage. A young woman showed them to us, with the strange announcement,--'All these animals that you see _used to live_ formerly.' I spare you the green-house built of masses of rock and