With a skein of claret Berlin wool, cast on 210 stitches. Then fasten on the orné wool, and knit one row in moss-stitch. This stitch, as most of our readers are aware, is performed by alternately knitting and purling the stitches, the first stitch of every row being invariably slipped. In the second row, and all following ones, you must be careful to reverse the stitch; that is, if the last row has been finished with a knitted stitch, you must purl the one immediately after the slip-stitch. This stitch has a peculiarly soft and mossy appearance, whence its name of "moss-stitch"; and no material is so well calculated to develop its beauty as the orné knittingwool-a new invention; or rather an improvement on the patent wool of some seven or eight years ago. In this new wool the design works out with all the accuracy and beauty of painting; and it is a singular fact, applying equally to this and the fluted embroidery, that the colours, instead of fading from wear, become considerably brighter.

When four plain rows in the moss-stitch are done, the colours will begin to form a pattern. 5th row. 17 stitches green, 7 brown, 33 green, 3 brown, 45 green; then count backwards.

6th. 16 green, 14 brown, 20 green, 2 brown, 4 green, 5 brown, 2 green, 3 brown, 36 green; then count backwards.

7th. 14 green, 20 brown, 9 green, 4 brown, 2 green, 4 brown, 3 green, 5 brown, 1 green, 6 brown, 31 green, 3 brown, 3 green; then count backwards.

Regular knitting will now perfectly ensure a proper development of the pattern. If the knot, which should come in the wool at the end of every row, does not occur in its place, the latter stitches must be either tightened or slackened with the finger, without undoing the work.

A round of treble crochet, in shaded amber wool, should afterwards be worked all round the anti-macassar; and an orné fringe be knotted in at regular intervals.

AIGUILLETTE

I had heard and read much about the Valley of Rocks; and all that I had heard and read was so monotonously eulogistic, that I had made up my mind to be greatly disappointed. As the Athenians grew weary of hearing Aristides so incessantly called the Good, so I, similarly wilful, had almost resolved beforehand that Lynton would prove a disenchantment. "Yarrow unvisited" was a glorious dream: "Yarrow visited" might prove but a wearisome reality. I was wrong. Quickly there faded from my mind the remembrance of all that I had heard: what I saw was magnificent; and I thought not of the guide-books, in gazing at the rocks and the sea. So now I swell the very chorus which once was a weariness to me. I, too, must perplex my brain in seeking for fit adjectives; and alas! I may be a bore. Our age will pardon many things. It is tolerant enough of insincerity. Falsehood and hypocrisy, sentimentality and cant, seldom rouse it into very fiery indignation. It is not an age of great crimes, but neither is it an age of sublime virtues. Much that in old days would have roused a nation to arms, now elicits merely a leading article. But the good age, however undecided in matters of morality, is firm as adamant in one matter of taste-bored it will not be!

And yet I am going to write about Lynton! Why? In the first place there is no danger of my boring the age, for the age will not read me: in the second, man (you may possibly have met with the remark before, ami lecteur)-man is a social animal. As in sorrow he rushes to seek consolation in the kind words and the looks yet more loving of his friends, so after joy ne seeks to communicate his emotions to others. If he is a poet, he becomes eloquent; if he is a Philister, he becomes garrulous; but if he is neither the one nor the other-if, though without the inspiration of the first, he is also free from the affectations and the solemn truisms of the second-his talk may, for a few moments, be heard without weariness. And this is a good time to speak. So many of us have just returned from the summer holidays, so many have still fresh and glowing within them the memory of their recent joys, that one who tells of his own pleasures may find a ready and not too critical audience among his fellow-tourists. However poor, then, however common-place and pale our words may be, they may yet serve, perhaps, to call back to the soul some of those delights in which we have all been revelling.

place is growing and thriving. Neat little shops begin to show themselves, and large hotels. Unexceptionable is the accommodation at these; unexceptionable, also, the attire of their visitors. We heard of fat and opulent old gentlemen, who, during the heat of the season, had been obliged to sleep in their carriages, no lodgings being anywhere procurable. And yet the town is one of lodging-houses. Scarcely a cottage but has its advertisement of "Apartments" in the window; and said advertisements oftentimes jar strangely with the flowering roses that are climbing around it. As yet, however, the place is not spoiled by fashion, nor vulgarized by gentility. The artists are still kings there. Happy artists! rejoice in your merry Bohemian life; clasp sketch-book and easel closely to your hearts, and paint, paint away. If some of you degrade a divine art into a mean handicraft, and are tradesmen instead of poets, yet, as a body, you English artists are doing a glorious work. With honest, humble diligence you sit beneath some old tree, and labour, labour, till the mosses on its trunk, and the leaves fluttering in the breeze, and the tall ferns, and the gleam of blue sky above-all grow eloquent upon your canvas. Meanwhile, the summer airs fan your brown cheeks; in the pauses of your labour, the woodland birds bid you be of good cheer. Some village maiden, tripping by with pitcher in her hands, halts for a moment, and peeps timidly, wistfully at your work, and then passes on, singing; and still the busy brush moves swiftly, and still colour plashes out, and form grows distinct and lovely; and thus you work, amid sunshine and music and joy.

We have not the honour and happiness to be artists. We could not live at Lynton, and live by Lynton. A short and hurried stay was all that we could permit ourselves; but we resolved that froin sunrise till far on into the small hours, we would live in the open air. Not an hour should be wasted of the brief time at our disposal. So, riding in from Ilfracombe one glorious summer evening, we rushed through a hasty tea, and forthwith started for the Valley of Rocks.

waves flash into a hundred momentary suns, fell also upon the old rocks above, and penetrated into every fissure, and gave to these stern masses a beauty of its own. How long they had slept there! And every summer day the sunbeams had caressed them-every winter night the moaning winds rushed round them, and played strange music in their cracks and hollows. How long? For ages; and we, the creatures of a day, passed on with somewhat of a religious awe tempering our joy in the universal sunshine. We had not far to go. As we walked, every step showed the old rocks in wilder and more rugged forms; yet ever Beauty would have her way, and strong as they were, she was stronger. Was a rock prone on the ground?-she had clothed it with mosses. Did it stand up, high, stern, abrupt?—she sent her foxgloves to wave their purple bells round its base; and far up, her lichens had tinted it with a thousand hues. Everywhere she was present-in the sky, in the many-coloured sea, in the rocks themselves; and as we mused upon her omnipresence, we saw before us, as we turned of a sudden, the Valley of Rocks. Oh, she was there too!

We cannot "describe" this valley; but imagine yourself standing on a path some six feet wide, with the sea on your right, and the grouud all bestrown with rocks rising above you on the left; then imagine an amphitheatre of hills, over which yet larger rocks are scattered; and then, right before you, a glorious rock, the largest of them all. Imagine this, and you will have, not a picture of the place, but a catalogue of one or two things that must be included in the picture.

We hurried on; we passed by, unheeding many a rock, whose quaint outline might well have detained us for a while we pressed right on, for before us stood the Castle Rock, and we were athirst to gaze upon the universal beauty from such glorious vantage ground. In a moment more we had ascended it; and then began an hour of such delight, mingled with such strange wild troubled fancies, and ending with such fervent silent prayer and praise-an hour so rich in emotion, though so utterly barren in incident-an hour when we were so fully and freely living with Nature, questioning and adoring her, that its memory can never die within us, but will remain for ever green and sacred in our soul.

And first we gaze upon the sea. O dwellers at Margate and Brighton, you have not seen the sea yet! you have looked at the washy water, but you have not seen the interminable variety of gorgeous colouring, from richest purple to purest snow, that glorifies this sea of North Devon.

It was sunset. The day had been one of intense heat. Not a breath of wind had stirred. A soft dreamy haze had hung all day over earth and sea, like some garment woven by the fairies, to hide the blushing beauties of their queen, yet which did but add to them in veiling them: for this haze gave to what might else have been mere every-day love

liness somewhat of mystery, of enchantment, and of poetic voluptuousness. Gazing at Nature through this veil, we had seemed to see less with the eyes than with the soul. And now it was disappearing. Not that any rude breeze swept outwards from the land, and chased it roughly away-not that a storm was approaching

not that the waves grew rough: but the great Sun, sinking, glowed through the hazeand, every instant, the sky became flushed with a deeper crimson, and soon that crimson trembled on the sea-and the mist was visible no more. It had gone: and lovely as it was, we had no leisure to regret it, no leisure to think of it, even to think at all. As we sat there, on the Castle Rock, it was enough to see. Our whole life was in our eyes. But that sunset, who can paint? Who can recall its crimson, and its bars of deep green, and its clouds of orange, and the few white flakes that grew paler and paler amid the exuberance of colour, till they faded quite away? And as they faded, the sun sank lower and lower yet: who can paint this in words? The sun sank still: soon the colour was more on the sea than on the sky: yet a few moments more, and it had gone from both. And it was only then, raising our dazzled eyes and drawing a long deep breath as of relief, that we saw, clear and cool above us, the young_moon. It was an ecstacy to gaze upon her. That silver crescent, so clear and sharp and well-defined, was delightful to our eyes. We had had colour in bewildering magnificence; and now, it was positively a relief to have form-to see a line instead of an extravagance of colour. It was like turning from one of Turner's glorious pictures, half satiated with its richness, to gaze upon some old classic sculptor's workcolourless, perhaps almost cold, but exquisite in its proportion and faultless in its clear outline.

Now, too, was the fittest time to see the rocks. The sunshine had softened and mellowed their forms into loveliness; but with the night they grow weird and wild once more. We stood yet on the Castle Rock, and as the moonlight grew stronger, we looked on the strange forms around us: so strange are they, that one can hardly resist the temptation of believing that man had something to do with their erection. But it is all Nature's work; and here, within half a mile's space, she has crowded together a host of her strangest fantasies. A weird place by night! Hundreds of feet below us, the old sea was rolling up against the shore. All joy seemed to have gone from that sea. The few faint lines of light that the moon threw upon it, only made more impressive the darkness that was creeping on. By daylight, its merry wavelets had seemed to leap against the rocks, as in play. Now, they appeared faint and weary. They rolled languidly on, and their voice seemed one of complaint. So many thousand years, yet never a rest! rolling evermore wearily! We stood so high that the sound came but dully and heavily to our ears; but there was in it (or so it seemed to our overwrought fancy) a strange plaintive tone, as if one had questioned for ever and found no answer.

N

Each fresh wave that urged slowly on seemed to repeat some wild old question; but the stern rocks were silent still, and the waves fell back, complaining. Ere long their voice grew hoarse and harsh the weariness and the burden seemed to lie heavily upon them; and our own soul shared their sorrow. For to us too, as to all men, there are secrets hid sternly, as in these old rocks; and wearily by night and day we ask an answer. The answer comes not. Like a broken wave, as hopelessly and sadly, our eager questionings roll back: and the secrets stand before us yet. It was terrible to listen to this ceaseless moaning of the sea. It crushed us back into ourselves-seemed to illuminate with a lurid ghostly light all the dark places of our soul; and in its murmur there was no hope. Wave after wave rolled sadly in; wave after wave rolled sadly out; and there was no other sound upon the land and sea, except this sad unvarying plaint.

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Who spoke? 'Twas but the cry of a sea-gull far down yet we started, almost in fear. The silence had been so utter, one moment ago-the earth seemed so hushed and still, the place so solitary, that this one wild cry smote strangely on our ear. Truly a wild cry! Hurried, harsh, uncouth, it seemed a cry of sorrow akin to the moaning of the sea. Idle and false fancy! One sick brain was trying to persuade itself that Nature too was sick and sad. Weary with uncongenial work, a man comes into these solitary places; and for a time the living light, the flowers, and the birds fill him with a joy that is almost agonizing in its intensity; but ere long comes a sad reaction. The melancholy has been expelled from him; but it seems now cast over all Nature instead. So it was with us, but not for long. Shamed of our weakness, startled from our dreaming by the gull's cry, we looked out once more. And now the moon had lighted up all the sea; once more the waters loomed into beauty beneath the glory of her face; and their swift sparkle, their liquid light were eloquent of what? Not of sorrow, though still the plaintive beating of the surf continued; but of that which it is Nature's mission to teach and illustrate for ever-of joy. Broader and clearer grew the moonlight on the watersricher and deeper grew the sunshine in our soul. Beauty was preaching her old Evangel: and we listened piously, lovingly to her teaching. And not alone of natural beauty did the scene grow eloquent not merely of moon and stars and waters was our dreams; but at the bidding of beauty, love awoke in our soul. And we thought of dear and noble friends who saw this summer moonlight, not glistening on the sea, but falling cold and calm upon a weary wilderness of houses; yet who, as they saw it, would feel its beauty and its glory even as we. And we thought how this moonlight would fall gently on solitary ships, and how many a sailor-precious jewel in roughest case!-would fly back in soul, as he saw its light, to the days of long ago, when it shone sweetly of an evening through the little latticed-window in upon the room,

where he, a child, sat at his mother's knee praying to his father. And we thought how perchance it shone there now, and the mother as she watched it prayed for her grown son at sea, who also at that moment was praying for her. Lastly, our fancy carried us away into a certain old churchyard; and we saw the moon light falling upon its lofty square tower, and down through the thick-leaved trees, on one grave-one, of all spots on earth to us the dearest, the most sacred! Thrice happy you, O friend, if never in the summer nights you have known what it is to kneel at one such grave; and think of one whose place knows her no more, but who lives ever in the Holy of Holies of your own half-breaking heart!

A strange strain this, for one who talked but a moment past of joy. And yet at this moment we were happy. The grief of which we spoke has mellowed into a memory; and we would not be without it. Meanwhile there was beauty around us. For now the gulls were all flying homeward, and the flutter of their white wings gleamed far below: the sea was light and vivid; and though the beauty of the rocks was strange and fantastic, yet none the less it was beauty. At the foot of one of them lay sleeping a small flock of mountain sheep; and higher up on the hills we could trace here and there one or two stragglers, who from time to time gave a quiet bleat. The bleating of sheep, the cry of seagulls, the rolling of the waves-these were the three sounds we heard. No word of ours broke in upon their harmony. We had with us one companion; but he was a poet, and therefore did not speak. Who could, or would? Was there not something in the silence of those grand old rocks, whose rugged forms, in strange contortions, to which the moonlight gave new mystery, lay scattered round us-was there not something in that moonlight itself, and in the waters upon which it shone, to check all talk? It was enough to see and hear. Slowly and unwillingly, we at last came down from the great rock. We did not return by the Cliff-walk. Honestly, we had not nerve enough for it at that momentit is no place for dreamy gentlemen at night. We walked back through the valley.

And as we walked, rock upon rock stood before us. High up upon the hills, some strangelyshaped peaks seemed like gaunt arms upstretched in prayer. And, indeed, was not the place a most glorious temple? Some think that in old times the Druids prayed here. Well, it can do us no harm at any time to pray, or in any place to remember the Maker thereof. And so, with the sounding sea far below us, and the summer sky far above, and around us nothing but beauty and sublimity; with not a thing to remind us of the poor troubles and perplexities of daily life, but with a thousand to remind us of God's infinite glory, we prayed as we walked along. Nor ever, when the deep rich notes of the organ cunningly-played have rushed in a flood-tide of melody through cloister and aisle, and filled the whole church with the glory of their sound-nor ever, at broad