[19] The Two Lads are heaps of loose stones, about ten or twelve feet in height, set up, as the story goes, to commemorate the death of two shepherd boys, who were found on the spot after a long search, missing their way during a heavy fall of snow. The tale is most probably incorrect; these mural monuments have been gradually accumulated by the passers-by;--a custom handed down from the most remote ages, and still observed as an act of religious worship in the East. There is little doubt but they are remnants yet lingering amongst us of the "altars upon every high hill," once dedicated to Baal, or Bel, the great object of Carthaginian or Phoenician worship, from which our Druidical rites were probably derived. MOTHER RED-CAP; OR, THE ROSICRUCIANS. A LEGEND OF THE NORTH. PART THE FIRST. In the wild and mountainous region of East Lancashire, at the foot of the long line of hills called Blackstonedge, and not far from the town of Rochdale, stood one of those old grim-looking mansions, the abode of our Saxon ancestors; a quiet, sheltered nest, where ages and generations had alike passed by. The wave of time had produced no change; the name and the inheritance were the same, and seemingly destined to continue unaltered by the mutations, the common lot of all that man labours to perpetuate. This state of things existed at the date of our story; now, alas! the race of its former possessors is extinct, their name only remains a relic of things that were--their former mansion standing,[20] as if in mockery, amidst the hum of wheels, and in melancholy contrast with the toil and animation of this manufacturing, money-getting district. Buckley Hall, to which we allude, is still an object of interest to the antiquary and the lover of romance, telling of days that are for ever departed, when the lords of these paternal acres were the occupants, not impoverishers, of the soil from unrecorded ages--constituting a tribe, a race of sturdy yeomanry attached to their country and to the lands on which they dwelt. But they are nigh extinct--other habits and other pursuits have prevailed. Profuse hospitality and rude benevolence have given place to habits of business as they are called, and to a more calculating and enterprising disposition. The most ancient families have become absorbed or overwhelmed by the mighty progress of this new element, this outpouring of wealth as from some unseen source; and in many instances their names only are recognised in these old and rickety mansions, now the habitation of the mechanic and the plebeian. Many of these dwellings remain--a melancholy contrast to the trim erections, the symbols of a new race, along with new habits and forms of existence, sufficiently testifying to the folly and the vain expectations of those who toil and labour hard for a long lease with posterity.