In the incidents of the Leigh Peerage, are the materials of half-a-dozen romances.

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Guy’s cliff—­where Guy, Earl of Warwick, and slayer of the Dun Cow, lived and died as a hermit, fed daily by his Countess, little knowing whom she fed—­is situated on the banks of the Avon, about a mile from Warwick, on the high road to Kenilworth, and may also be approached by footpaths across the fields leading to the same village.  The pictures of Guy’s Cliff have been extravagantly praised, but the natural and artificial beauties of its gardens and pleasure grounds constitute its chief attraction.  For, says Dugdale, it is “a place of so great delight in respect to the river gliding below the rock, the dry wholesome situation, and the fair grove of lofty elms overshadowing it, that to one who desireth a retired life, either for his devotions or study, the like is hardly to be found.”

What Dugdale said two hundred years ago may truly be repeated now, especially in a warm autumn or summer evening, when the click of a water-mill adds sound to the pleasure to be derived from the thick shade of the lofty trees overhead, mossy turf under the feet, and the sight of flowing water.  Henry V. visited this hermitage; and Shakspeare, on what authority we know not, is said to have frequented it.

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Kenilworth follows Guy’s Cliff, once a retired country village of one street, one church, and one inn, now vulgarized by being made the site of a railway station.  At the risk of offending the Kenilworthians, we strongly advise the romantic youths and maidens inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s romance not to visit the ruins, which, although an excellent excuse and pleasant situation for a picnic, have nothing romantic about them beyond grey walls.  The woods and waters which formed so important a part of the scenery during Queen Elizabeth’s visit, have disappeared, as well as all the stately buildings.

At the same time, imagination will go a long way, and it may not be a day ill spent after reading Laleham’s “Princely Pleasures of Kenilworth,” in which he describes what he himself saw when Queen Elizabeth visited the Earl of Leicester there in 1575, to journey over, especially if accompanied by a cold collation, including a salad of the Avon crawfish, and a little iced punch.  It would be still better for good pedestrians to walk the distance by the fields and push on to the inn for refreshment, without which all tame scenery is so very flat.  In the sublimity of the Alps, the Pyrenees, or even the great Highland hills, a man may forget his dinner; but, when within the verge of the horizon church-towers and smoking chimneys of farm-houses continually occur, visions of fat, brown, sucking pigs, rashers of ham and boiled fowls, with foaming tankards, will intrude unbidden after an hour or two of contemplation.

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