covered with dark ivy, fissured by time and menacing its neighborhood with an appearance of all tumbling down at no remote period. I turned east and came to a pretty little stream called the Ouse, over which I threw several pebbles by way of exercise. On the west bank I found a fine walk, planted with the only trees of size I have seen in this country; it extended about half a mile. Looking up the stream a bridge of fine stone is seen, and on the opposite shores many steam mills were in operation. I followed down this mighty stream till the road gave out, and, the grass being very wet and the rain falling heavily, I returned to my rooms. York is much cleaner than Newcastle, and I remarked more Quakers; but alas! how far both these towns are below fair Edinburgh. The houses here are low, covered with tiles, and sombre-looking. No birds have I seen except Jackdaws and Rooks. To my surprise my host waited upon me at supper; when he enters my room I think of Scroggins' ghost. I have spent my evening reading "Blackwood's Magazine."
April 24. How doleful has this day been to me! It pleased to rain, and to snow, and to blow cold all day. I called on Mr. Phillips, the curator of the Museum, and he assured me that the society was too poor to purchase my work. I spent the evening by invitation at the Rev. Wm. Turner's in company with four other gentlemen. Politics and emancipation were the chief topics of conversation. How much more good would the English do by revising their own intricate laws, and improving the condition of their poor, than by troubling themselves and their distant friends with what does not concern them. I feel nearly determined to push off to-morrow, and yet it would not do; I may be wrong, and to-morrow may be fairer to me in every way; but this "hope deferred" is a very fatiguing science to study. I could never make up my mind to live and die in England whilst the sweet-scented jessamine and the magnolias flourish so purely in my
