branches of trees, and the Gothic tower--a sort of summer-house, and lead you a long, long way through wood, then over green hills and through a narrow defile to the magnificent ruin, the sublimely situated Red Castle. The decayed walls and the hewn rocky sides are of great extent. You can reach the interior only through a winding passage blasted in the rock, so utterly dark that I found myself obliged to use my guide's petticoat as an Ariadne's clue, for I literally could not see my hand before my eyes. Out of this tunnel you emerge into a picturesque alley of rock, with smooth high walls overarched with mountain-ashes. On the side you perceive a cavern, the mouth of which is still closed with a rusty iron gate. Climbing rude steps in the rock, you reach the upper part of the ruin--a high roofless tower, in whose walls, fifteen feet thick, many trees centuries old have struck their roots, and in the interior of which is a well, which appears to sink down to the entrails of the earth. The massy and unshaken barrier around it, the lofty tower through which the sky appears above, and the bottomless depth beneath, where reigns eternal night, produce an effect I never remember to have experienced. You see Hope and Despair allegorically united in one picture before you. The tower, and the rock on which it stands, look down from a giddy height, in a perfectly perpendicular line, upon the valley, in which the huge trees appear like copse-wood. By a somewhat considerable leap of the imagination you reach a New Zealander's hut on the banks of a little lake, built many years ago from a drawing of Captain Cook's, and furnished with arrows, spears, tomahawks, skulls of eaten enemies, and such-like pretty trifles, the innocent luxuries of these children of nature. Here we closed our walk, leaving unseen several devices which deform the place, and which, as well as (alas!) the paths, are somewhat in decay. But these defects are slight, in a whole so full of sublime and wondrously-varied natural beauty. _Newport, Jan. 3rd._ It is winter in good earnest;--the earth covered with ice and six inches of snow, and the cold in the rooms, so insufficiently warmed by open fires, almost insufferable. As I passed the greater part of the day in the carriage, I have little to tell. _Birmingham, Jan. 4th._ To-day too we saw nothing remarkable on our road but a newly laid out park through which we drove, with a small but elegant garden, with very pretty flower-stands of various sorts, and baskets, all of fine wire, and clothed with creepers. R---- was obliged to draw them with stiff fingers. The inn at which we ate our luncheon bore the date 1603 carved in stone, and is the prettiest specimen of a cottage in an antique style, with brickwork in various patterns, I have met with. Towards evening we reached Birmingham, where I am reposing comfortably after the excessive cold. _January 6th._