[ 124 ]
expression of the old man is admirable. Half- length of Queen Elizabeth, when young, in a very rich dress. On the stair- case is a fine colossal mar- ble head, a modern copy of the dying Alexander.
Quitting Holker-Hall, we hurried through Flookbrooke, to the Carter-House on the Lancaster road, that we might pass this wide expanse (almost nine miles across) before the ocean resumed his lately abdicated domain. But though these sands exceeded in extent those we had already passed, the effect was not equal to the impression we re- ceived from the first; both from the circumstance of the charm of novelty being lost, and the boun- dary of mountains which lately was so grand, being now dwindled into comparative insignificance. But still the accompaniments were pleasing and curious; promontories and bays, hills and woods, villages and towns, in the distance; and numberless old women and children before us earning a scanty subsistence by digging cockles out of the sand, which they sell afterwards at two-pence per quart. A little river, flowing across the sands, soon pre- sented itself; but it was small, and passed without the assistance of the guide, who, stationed on the margin of the Kent, took us under his protection as we passed this ford; highly dangerous to the incautious traveller, and so perilous even to the
�� �
