There had always been a tradition that one of the ships belonging to the Spanish Armada had been wrecked off this coast, but no treasure had ever been found. Two years ago, when the river was low, a cow went into the mud to drink, and came out with a splendid Spanish old gold coin of the time of the Armada stuck in her hoof. Nothing more was discovered, but as the river was tidal it was a curious confirmation of the old tradition. On our way South we could not help noticing how far more beautiful Scotland is than Norway. The Heather was unusually fine this year. We stayed a night in Edinburgh, which gave me an opportunity of seeing the pictures in the National Gallery. I wonder if many tourists visit it? The morning I was there I did not see two people in the gallery. Besides the Raeburns, which are of world-wide fame, several pictures stand out with peculiar interest, especially the life-sized Gainsborough of the young Mrs. Grahame. She sat for this picture as a bride, but before it came home she was dead and her husband had gone to the wars. When he came back, he never had the courage to open the case which contained his young wife's portrait. On his death, many long years after it was painted, it was opened by his heirs, and inside the case was the little white slipper she had left with the painter to help him to finish his picture. The portrait was given to the Edinburgh Gallery, and the slipper was kept by the family. It is worth noting that an oil picture should have remained so long shut up and apparently not deteriorated in any way. There is a lovely Greuze, one of the prettiest I have ever seen, a child of about fourteen crying over a dead canary; an exquisite little Boucher of Mme. de Pompadour; a large picture by the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Tiepolo, whose works are rarely seen out of Venice. The picture gives one more impression of his power and cleverness than it delights one with its beauty. The expression, character, and sex are described by the power of the brush as completely as by the word-painting of a Paul Bourget novel. What added to my interest in Tiepolo was the revival of admiration his works have lately had among young French painters. I was immensely pleased at seeing a portrait of the painter Martin, by himself-a red-haired youth, with the cold dreamy eyes of the artistic temperament, a mouth rather sensual than passionate, a fine brow, and a slightly receding chin, which gave a touch of weakness to the face. All my life I have so admired his wildly imaginative illustrations of the Bible, Milton, etc. The impression given by the portrait is of a touching, interesting face, with that look of sorrow which so appeals to one, especially in the young. The gods do not always remember that those whom they love should die young. Poor Martin did not die till middle life, and went mad, I believe.

On leaving Edinburgh we returned to Tweed-side, where we saw several of the old Border towers and the really fine 'stately homes'of England. Here I was struck by the same mistake which prevails in the South. The walls and shapes of fine old houses are ruined by allowing, even on the southern and western aspects, a rampageous growth of coarse creepers, such as Ivy, the common Virginia Creeper, and Ampelopsis veitchii. This last is the most insidious and destructive of all, as no kitten compared to a cat, and no baby donkey compared to an old one, could ever more completely change its character from youth to age than does this creeper. When first planted, the tiny, delicate growth that creeps up the mullioned windows is as pretty and harmless as anything can be; but in a year or two all this turns into a huge mass of green leaves of an even shape and size, smothering up any less strong-growing creeper and destroying all outline of the house itself, its tiny feet sticking so fast to the stone or brick work that, if you try to pull them away, small particles of the wall itself come with them. Besides the temptation of its beautiful early growth, one must admit that for ten days the red and bronze and gold of its autumn tints go far to compensate for its many defects during the rest of the year. But this pleasure is easily retained by allowing it to grow over some ugly barn or northern wall, which has no architecture to injure or hide, and where flowering creepers would not flower. No one who has ever been to America and seen Boston can forget the dreary effect of house after house covered from cellar to roof with this luxuriant, overpowering 'Vine,'as every Creeper is called in America. The true name of the Ampelopsis is Tricuspidata; but the Americans call it Japanese Ivy, in memory of where it comes from. If anything could accentuate the ugliness of the general effect, it is the square holes cut for the windows in this evenly green foliage. Everything is worth having in London that will grow there, but, with this picture in my mind, may I urge all who have any influence to make some protest against the fashionable use of this creeper, which seems to prevail from South to North of Great Britain. Just before I left home I saw with consternation that every delicate brick turret of Hampton Court Palace had been carefully planted with Ampelopsis. For the present it looks harmless enough to all but the prophetic eye of a gardener, but in a few years the sharp lines of the delicate masonry will be entirely veiled by its luxuriant and monotonous growth. Surely fine and historical buildings are very much better left without creepers. In the case of ordinary modern houses with bare walls it is infinitely better to cover then with some of the endless variety of shrubs, creepers, and plants, which can be chosen to flower in succession through the whole year-from the Chimonanthus fragrans, which pushes forth its sweet-scented brown flowers in January, to the bare branches of the Jasminum nudi-florum, whose yellow stars light up a December fog.

Returning from Scotland, we spent a few days near Lancaster. The town is picturesquely situated. It is full of sketching possibilities for those who delight, as Turner did, in the glorification of commonplace objects by the veiling and unveiling of smoke, and in the constant colour-changes produced by the same. A very handsome bridge crosses the broad Lune, and carries the Preston and Kendal canal. This is one of the curious historical records of the waste of a people's money, and absolutely dead speculation. This canal was just finished, with its magnificent engineering, at great expense and with high hopes of its usefulness, immediately before the railways came and rendered it almost useless. Sleepy barges glide along it, profiting by its dignified engineering, and creeping under its countless bridges as they never could have done had it been ceaselessly ploughed by small steamers, as was intended. I do not exactly know why, but it brought back to my mind-from a consecutiveness of idea, I suppose-the elaborate fortifications of Quebec, the pride of George III.'s heart, upon which had been spent the nation's money and labour, and which were scarcely finished when the developments of modern warfare rendered them useless. Not very far from Lancaster, at Levens, is the famous example of topiary gardening which figures in the last edition of the 'English Flower Garden.'I was unfortunately prevented from going to see it by deluges of rain.