THE LAKES.

July 16th.--On Saturday, we left Newby Bridge, and came by steamboat up

Windermere Lake to Lowwood Hotel, where we now are. The foot of the lake

is just above Newby Bridge, and it widens from that point, but never to

such a breadth that objects are not pretty distinctly visible from shore

to shore. The steamer stops at two or three places in the course of its

voyage, the principal one being Bowness, which has a little bustle and

air of business about it proper to the principal port of the lake. There

are several small yachts, and many skiffs rowing about. The banks are

everywhere beautiful, and the water, in one portion, is strewn with

islands; few of which are large enough to be inhabitable, but they all

seem to be appropriated, and kept in the neatest order. As yet, I have

seen no wildness; everything is perfectly subdued and polished and imbued

with human taste, except, indeed, the outlines of the hills, which

continue very much the same as God made them. As we approached the head

of the lake, the congregation of great hills in the distance became very

striking. The shapes of these English mountains are certainly far more

picturesque than those which I have seen in Eastern America, where their

summits are almost invariably rounded, as I remember them. They are

great hillocks, great bunches of earth, similar to one another in their

developments. Here they have variety of shape, rising into peaks,

falling in abrupt precipices, stretching along in zigzag outlines, and

thus making the most of their not very gigantic masses, and producing a

remarkable effect.

We arrived at the Lowwood Hotel, which is very near the head of the lake,

not long after two o'clock. It stands almost on the shore of Windermere,

with only a green lawn between,--an extensive hotel, covering a good deal

of ground; but low, and rather village-inn-like than lofty. We found the

house so crowded as to afford us no very comfortable accommodations,

either as to parlor or sleeping-rooms, and we find nothing like the

home-feeling into which we at once settled down at Newby Bridge. There

is a very pretty vicinity, and a fine view of mountains to the northwest,

sitting together in a family group, sometimes in full sunshine, sometimes

with only a golden gleam on one or two of them, sometimes all in a veil

of cloud, from which here and there a great, dusky head raises itself,

while you are looking at a dim obscurity. Nearer, there are high, green

slopes, well wooded, but with such decent and well-behaved wood as you

perceive has grown up under the care of man; still no wildness, no

ruggedness,--as how should there be, when, every half-mile or so, a

porter's lodge or a gentleman's gateway indicates that the whole region

is used up for villas. On the opposite shore of the lake there is a

mimic castle, which I suppose I might have mistaken for a real one two

years ago. It is a great, foolish toy of gray stone.

A steamboat comes to the pier as many as six times a day, and

stage-coaches and omnibuses stop at the door still oftener, communicating

with Ambleside and the town of Windermere, and with the railway, which

opens London and all the world to us. We get no knowledge of our

fellow-guests, all of whom, like ourselves, live in their own circles,

and are just as remote from us as if the lake lay between. The only

words I have spoken since arriving here have been to my own family or to

a waiter, save to one or two young pedestrians who met me on a walk, and

asked me the distance to Lowwood Hotel. "Just beyond here," said I, and

I might stay for months without occasion to speak again.

Yesterday forenoon J----- and I walked to Ambleside,--distant barely two

miles. It is a little town, chiefly of modern aspect, built on a very

uneven hillside, and with very irregular streets and lanes, which

bewilder the stranger as much as those of a larger city. Many of the

houses look old, and are probably the cottages and farm-houses which

composed the rude village a century ago; but there are stuccoed shops and

dwellings, such as may have been built within a year or two; and three

hotels, one of which has the look of a good old village inn; and the

others are fashionable or commercial establishments. Through the midst

of the village comes tumbling and rumbling a mountain streamlet, rushing

through a deep, rocky dell, gliding under an old stone inch, and turning,

when occasion calls, the great block of a water-mill. This is the only

very striking feature of the village,--the stream taking its rough

pathway to the lake as it used to do before the poets had made this

region fashionable.

In the evening, just before eight o'clock, I took a walk alone, by a road

which goes up the hill, back of our hotel, and which I supposed might be

the road to the town of Windermere. But it went up higher and higher,

and for the mile or two that it led me along, winding up, I saw no traces

of a town; but at last it turned into a valley between two high ridges,

leading quite away from the lake, within view of which the town of

Windermere is situated. It was a very lonely road, though as smooth,

hard, and well kept as any thoroughfare in the suburbs of a city; hardly

a dwelling on either side, except one, half barn, half farm-house, and

one gentleman's gateway, near the beginning of the road, and another more

than a mile above. At, two or three points there were stone barns, which

are here built with great solidity. At one place there was a painted

board, announcing that a field of five acres was to be sold, and

referring those desirous of purchasing to a solicitor in London. The

lake country is but a London suburb. Nevertheless, the walk was lonely

and lovely; the copses and the broad hillside, the glimpses of the lake,

the great misty company of pikes and fells, beguiled me into a sense of

something like solitude; and the bleating of the sheep, remote and near,

had a like tendency. Gaining the summit of the hill, I had the best view

of Windermere which I have yet attained,--the best, I should think, that

can be had, though, being towards the south, it brings the softer instead

of the more striking features of the landscape into view. But it shows

nearly the whole extent of the lake, all the way from Lowwood, beyond

Newby Bridge, and I think there can hardly be anything more beautiful in

the world. The water was like a strip and gleam of sky, fitly set among

lovely slopes of earth. It was no broader than many a river, and yet you

saw at once that it could be no river, its outline being so different

from that of a running stream, not straight nor winding, but stretching

to one side or the other, as the shores made room for it.

This morning it is raining, and we are not very comfortable nor

contented, being all confined to our little parlor, which has a broken

window, against which I have pinned The Times to keep out the chill damp

air. U---- has been ill, in consequence of having been overheated at

Newby Bridge. We have no books, except guide-books, no means of

amusement, nothing to do. There are no newspapers, and I shall remember

Lowwood not very agreeably. As far as we are concerned, it is a

scrambling, ill-ordered hotel, with insufficient attendance, wretched

sleeping-accommodations, a pretty fair table, but German-silver forks

and spoons; our food does not taste very good, and yet there is really no

definite fault to be found with it.

Since writing the above, I have found the first volume of Sir Charles

Grandison, and two of G. P. R. James's works, in the coffee-room. The

days pass heavily here, and leave behind them a sense of having answered

no very good purpose. They are long enough, at all events, for the sun

does not set till after eight o'clock, and rises I know not when. One of

the most remarkable distinctions between England and the United States is

the ignorance into which we fall of whatever is going on in the world the

moment we get away from the great thoroughfares and centres of life. In

Leamington we heard no news from week's end to week's end, and knew not

where to find a newspaper; and here the case is neither better nor worse.

The rural people really seem to take no interest in public affairs; at

all events, they have no intelligence on such subjects. It is possible

that the cheap newspapers may, in time, find their way into the cottages,

or, at least, into the country taverns; but it is not at all so now. If

they generally know that Sebastopol is besieged, it is the extent of

their knowledge. The public life of America is lived through the mind

and heart of every man in it; here the people feel that they have nothing

to do with what is going forward, and, I suspect, care little or nothing

about it. Such things they permit to be the exclusive concern of the

higher classes.

In front of our hotel, on the lawn between us and the lake, there are two

trees, which we have hitherto taken to be yews; but on examining them

more closely, I find that they are pine-trees, and quite dead and dry,

although they have the aspect of dark rich life. But this is caused by

the verdure of two great ivy-vines, which have twisted round them like

gigantic snakes, and, clambering up and throttling the life out of them,

have put out branches, and made crowns of thick green leaves, so that, at

a little distance, it is quite impossible not to take them for genuine

trees. The trunks of the ivy-vines must be more than a foot in

circumference, and one feels they have stolen the life that belonged to

the pines. The dead branches of one of the pines stick out horizontally

through the ivy-boughs. The other shows nothing but the ivy, and in

shape a good deal resembles a poplar. When the pine trunks shall have

quite crumbled away, the ivy-stems will doubtless have gained sufficient

strength to sustain themselves independently.

July 19th.--Yesterday S----- went down the lake in the steamboat to take

U----, baby, and nurse to Newby Bridge, while the three rest of us should

make a tour through the lake region. After mamma's departure, and when I

had finished some letters, J----- and I set out on a walk, which finally

brought us to Bowness, through much delightful shade of woods, and past

beautiful rivulets or brooklets, and up and down many hills. This chief

harbor of the lakes seemed alive and bustling with tourists, it being a

sunny and pleasant day, so that they were all abroad, like summer

insects. The town is a confused and irregular little place, of very

uneven surface. There is an old church in it, and two or three large

hotels. We stayed there perhaps half an hour, and then went to the pier,

where shortly a steamer arrived, with music sounding,--on the deck of

which, with her back to us, sat a lady in a gray travelling-dress.

J----- cried out, "Mamma! mamma!" to which the lady deigned no notice,

but, he repeating it, she turned round, and was as much surprised, no

doubt, to see her husband and son, as if this little lake had been the

great ocean, and we meeting each other from opposite shores of it. We

soon steamed back to Lowwood, and took a car thence for Rydal and

Grasmere, after a cold luncheon. At Bowness I met Miss Charlotte

Cushman, who has been staying at the Lowwood Hotel with us since Monday,

without either party being aware of it.

Our road to Rydal lay through Ambleside, which is certainly a very pretty

town, and looks cheerfully in a sunny day. We saw Miss Martineau's

residence, called "The Knoll," standing high up on a hillock, and having

at its foot a Methodist chapel, for which, or whatever place of Christian

worship, this good lady can have no occasion. We stopped a moment in the

street below her house, and deliberated a little whether to call on her;

but concluded we would not.

After leaving Ambleside, the road winds in and out among the hills, and

soon brings us to a sheet (or napkin, rather than a sheet) of water,

which the driver tells us is Rydal Lake! We had already heard that it

was but three quarters of a mile long, and one quarter broad; still, it

being an idea of considerable size in our minds, we had inevitably drawn

its ideal, physical proportions on a somewhat corresponding scale. It

certainly did look very small; and I said, in my American scorn, that I

could carry it away easily in a porringer; for it is nothing more than a

grass-bordered pool among the surrounding hills which ascend directly

from its margin; so that one might fancy it, not, a permanent body of

water, but a rather extensive accumulation of recent rain. Moreover, it

was rippled with a breeze, and so, as I remember it, though the sun

shone, it looked dull and sulky, like a child out of humor. Now, the

best thing these small ponds can do is to keep perfectly calm and smooth,

and not attempt to show off any airs of their own, but content themselves

with serving as a mirror for whatever of beautiful or picturesque there

may be in the scenery around them. The hills about Rydal Water are not

very lofty, but are sufficiently so as objects of every-day view,--

objects to live with; and they are craggier than those we have hitherto

seen, and bare of wood, which indeed would hardly grow on some of their

precipitous sides.

On the roadside, as we reach the foot of the lake, stands a spruce and

rather large house of modern aspect, but with several gables and much

overgrown with ivy,--a very pretty and comfortable house, built, adorned,

and cared for with commendable taste. We inquired whose it was, and the

coachman said it was "Mr. Wordsworth's," and that "Mrs. Wordsworth was

still residing there." So we were much delighted to have seen his abode,

and as we were to stay the night at Grasmere, about two miles farther on,

we determined to come back and inspect it as particularly as should be

allowable. Accordingly, after taking rooms at Brown's Hotel, we drove

back in our return car, and, reaching the head of Rydal Water, alighted

to walk through this familiar scene of so many years of Wordsworth's

life. We ought to have seen De Quincey's former residence and Hartley

Coleridge's cottage, I believe, on our way, but were not aware of it at

the time. Near the lake there is a stone-quarry, and a cavern of some

extent, artificially formed, probably by taking out the stone. Above the

shore of the lake, not a great way from Wordsworth's residence, there is

a flight of steps hewn in a rock and ascending to a rock seat where a

good view of the lake may be attained; and, as Wordsworth has doubtless

sat there hundreds of times, so did we ascend and sit down, and look at

the hills and at the flags on the lake's shore.

Reaching the house that had been pointed out to us as Wordsworth's

residence, we began to peer about at its front and gables, and over the

garden wall, on both sides of the road, quickening our enthusiasm as much

as we could, and meditating to pilfer some flower or ivy-leaf from the

house or its vicinity, to be kept as sacred memorials. At this juncture

a man approached, who announced himself as the gardener of the place, and

said, too, that this was not Wordsworth's house at all, but the residence

of Mr. Ball, a Quaker gentleman; but that his ground adjoined

Wordsworth's, and that he had liberty to take visitors through the

latter. How absurd it would have been if we had carried away ivy-leaves

and tender recollections from this domicile of a respectable Quaker! The

gardener was an intelligent man, of pleasant, sociable, and respectful

address; and as we went along he talked about the poet, whom he had

known, and who, he said, was very familiar with the country people. He

led us through Mr. Ball's grounds, up a steep hillside, by winding,

gravelled walks, with summer-houses at points favorable for them. It was

a very shady and pleasant spot, containing about an acre of ground, and

all turned to good account by the manner of laying it out; so that it

seemed more than it really is. In one place, on a small, smooth slab of

slate, let into a rock, there is an inscription by Wordsworth, which I

think I have read in his works, claiming kindly regards from those who

visit the spot after his departure, because many trees had been spared at

his intercession. His own grounds, or rather his ornamental garden, is

separated from Mr. Ball's only by a wire fence, or some such barrier, and

the gates have no fastening, so that the whole appears like one

possession, and doubtless was so as regarded the poet's walks and

enjoyments. We approached by paths so winding that I hardly know how the

house stands in relation to the road; but, after much circuity, we really

did see Wordsworth's residence,--an old house with an uneven ridge-pole,

built of stone, no doubt, but plastered over with some neutral tint,--a

house that would not have been remarkably pretty in itself, but so

delightfully situated, so secluded, so hedged about with shrubbery, and

adorned with flowers, so ivy-grown on one side, so beautified with the

personal care of him who lived in it and loved it, that it seemed the

very place for a poet's residence; and as if, while he lived so long in

it, his poetry had manifested itself in flowers, shrubbery, and ivy. I

never smelt such a delightful fragrance of flowers as there was all

through the garden. In front of the house there is a circular terrace of

two ascents, in raising which Wordsworth had himself performed much of

the labor; and here there are seats, from which we obtained a fine view

down the valley of the Rothay, with Windermere in the distance,--a view

of several miles, and which we did not suppose could be seen, after

winding among the hills so far from the lake. It is very beautiful and

picture-like. While we sat here, S----- happened to refer to the ballad

of little Barbara Lewthwaite, and J----- began to repeat the poem

concerning her, and the gardener said that "little Barbara" had died not

a great while ago, an elderly woman, leaving grown-up children behind

her. Her marriage-name was Thompson, and the gardener believed there was

nothing remarkable in her character.

There is a summer-house at one extremity of the grounds, in deepest

shadow, but with glimpses of mountain views through trees which shut it

in, and which have spread intercepting boughs since Wordsworth died. It

is lined with pine-cones, in a pretty way enough, but of doubtful taste.

I rather wonder that people of real taste should help Nature out, and

beautify her, or perhaps rather prettify her so much as they do,--opening

vistas, showing one thing, hiding another, making a scene picturesque,

whether or no. I cannot rid myself of the feeling that there is

something false--a kind of humbug--in all this. At any rate, the traces

of it do not contribute to my enjoyment, and, indeed, it ought to be done

so exquisitely as to leave no trace. But I ought not to criticise in any

way a spot which gave me so much pleasure, and where it is good to think

of Wordsworth in quiet, past days, walking in his home-shadow of trees

which he knew, and training flowers, and trimming shrubs, and chanting in

an undertone his own verses up and down the winding walks.

The gardener gave J----- a cone from the summer-house, which had fallen

on the seat, and S----- got some mignonette, and leaves of laurel and ivy,

and we wended our way back to the hotel. Wordsworth was not the owner of

this house; it being the property of Lady Fleming. Mrs. Wordsworth still

lives there, and is now at home.

Five o'clock.---All day it has been cloudy and showery, with thunder now

and then; the mists hang low on the surrounding hills, adown which, at

various points, we can see the snow-white fall of little streamlets

("forces" they call them here) swollen by the rain. An overcast day is

not so gloomy in the hill-country as in the lowlands; there are more

breaks, more transfusion of skylight through the gloom, as has been the

case to-day, and as I found in Lenox; we get better acquainted with

clouds by seeing at what height they be on the hillsides, and find that

the difference betwixt a fair day and a cloudy and rainy one is very

superficial, after all. Nevertheless, rain is rain, and wets a man just

as much among the mountains as anywhere else; so we have been kept within

doors all day, till an hour or so ago, when J----- and I went down to the

village in quest of the post-office.

We took a path that leads from the hotel across the fields, and, coming

into a wood, crosses the Rothay by a one-arched bridge and passes the

village church. The Rothay is very swift and turbulent to-day, and

hurries along with foam-specks on its surface, filling its banks from

brim to brim,--a stream perhaps twenty feet wide, perhaps more; for I am

willing that the good little river should have all it can fairly claim.

It is the St. Lawrence of several of these English lakes, through which

it flows, and carries off their superfluous waters. In its haste, and

with its rushing sound, it was pleasant both to see and hear; and it

sweeps by one side of the old churchyard where Wordsworth lies buried,---

the side where his grave is made. The church of Grasmere is a very plain

structure, with a low body, on one side of which is a small porch with a

pointed arch. The tower is square and looks ancient; but the whole is

overlaid with plaster of a buff or pale yellow hue. It was originally

built, I suppose, of rough shingly stones, as many of the houses

hereabouts are now, and, like many of them, the plaster is used to give a

finish. We found the gate of the churchyard wide open; and the grass was

lying on the graves, having probably been mowed yesterday. It is but a

small churchyard, and with few monuments of any pretension in it, most of

them being slate headstones, standing erect. From the gate at which we

entered, a distinct foot-track leads to the corner nearest the riverside,

and I turned into it by a sort of instinct, the more readily as I saw a

tourist-looking man approaching from that point, and a woman looking

among the gravestones. Both of these persons had gone by the time I came

up, so that J----- and I were left to find Wordsworth's grave all by

ourselves.

At this corner of the churchyard there is a hawthorn bush or tree, the

extremest branches of which stretch as far as where Wordsworth lies.

This whole corner seems to be devoted to himself and his family and

friends; and they all lie very closely together, side by side, and head

to foot, as room could conveniently be found. Hartley Coleridge lies a

little behind, in the direction of the church, his feet being towards

Wordsworth's head, who lies in the row of those of his own blood. I

found out Hartley Coleridge's grave sooner than Wordsworth's; for it is

of marble, and, though simple enough, has more of sculptured device about

it, having been erected, as I think the inscription states, by his

brother and sister. Wordsworth has only the very simplest slab of slate,

with "William Wordsworth" and nothing else upon it. As I recollect it,

it is the midmost grave of the row. It is or has been well grass-grown,

but the grass is quite worn away from the top, though sufficiently

luxuriant at the sides. It looks as if people had stood upon it, and so

does the grave next to it, which I believe is one of his children. I

plucked some grass and weeds from it, and as he was buried within so few

years they may fairly be supposed to have drawn their nutriment from his

mortal remains, and I gathered them from just above his head. There is

no fault to be found with his grave,--within view of the hills, within

sound of the river, murmuring near by,--no fault except that he is

crowded so closely with his kindred; and, moreover, that, being so old a

churchyard, the earth over him must all have been human once. He might

have had fresh earth to himself; but he chose this grave deliberately.

No very stately and broad-based monument can ever be erected over it

without infringing upon, covering, and overshadowing the graves, not only

of his family, but of individuals who probably were quite disconnected

with him. But it is pleasant to think and know--were it but on the

evidence of this choice of a resting-place--that he did not care for a

stately monument.

After leaving the churchyard, we wandered about in quest of the

post-office, and for a long time without success. This little town of

Grasmere seems to me as pretty a place as ever I met with in my life. It

is quite shut in by hills that rise up immediately around it, like a

neighborhood of kindly giants. These hills descend steeply to the verge

of the level on which the village stands, and there they terminate at

once, the whole site of the little town being as even as a floor. I call

it a village; but it is no village at all,--all the dwellings standing

apart, each in its own little domain, and each, I believe, with its own

little lane leading to it, independently of the rest. Most of these are

old cottages, plastered white, with antique porches, and roses and other

vines trained against them, and shrubbery growing about them; and some

are covered with ivy. There are a few edifices of more pretension and of

modern build, but not so strikingly so as to put the rest out of

countenance. The post-office, when we found it, proved to be an ivied

cottage, with a good deal of shrubbery round it, having its own pathway,

like the other cottages. The whole looks like a real seclusion, shut out

from the great world by these encircling hills, on the sides of which,

whenever they are not too steep, you see the division lines of property,

and tokens of cultivation,--taking from them their pretensions to savage

majesty, but bringing them nearer to the heart of man.

Since writing the above, I have been again with S----- to see

Wordsworth's grave, and, finding the door of the church open, we went in.

A woman and little girl were sweeping at the farther end, and the woman

came towards us out of the cloud of dust which she had raised. We were

surprised at the extremely antique appearance of the church. It is

paved with bluish-gray flagstones, over which uncounted generations have

trodden, leaving the floor as well laid as ever. The walls are very

thick, and the arched windows open through them at a considerable

distance above the floor. There is no middle aisle; but first a row of

pews next either wall, and then an aisle on each side of the pews,

occupying the centre of the church,--then, two side aisles, but no

middle one. And down through the centre or the church runs a row of

five arches, very rude and round-headed, all of rough stone, supported

by rough and massive pillars, or rather square, stone blocks, which

stand in the pews, and stood in the same places probably, long before

the wood of those pews began to grow. Above this row of arches is

another row, built upon the same mass of stone, and almost as broad, but

lower; and on this upper row rests the framework, the oaken beams, the

black skeleton of the roof. It is a very clumsy contrivance for

supporting the roof, and if it were modern, we certainly should condemn

it as very ugly; but being the relic of a simple age it comes in well

with the antique simplicity of the whole structure. The roof goes up,

barn-like, into its natural angle, and all the rafters and cross-beams

are visible. There is an old font; and in the chancel is a niche,

where (judging from a similar one in Furness Abbey) the holy water used

to be placed for the priest's use while celebrating mass. Around the

inside of the porch is a stone bench, against the wall, narrow and

uneasy, but where a great many people had sat, who now have found

quieter resting-places.

The woman was a very intelligent-looking person, not of the usual English

ruddiness, but rather thin and somewhat pale, though bright, of aspect.

Her way of talking was very agreeable. She inquired if we wished to see

Wordsworth's monument, and at once showed it to us,--a slab of white

marble fixed against the upper end of the central row of stone arches,

with a pretty long inscription, and a profile bust, in bas-relief, of his

aged countenance. The monument, is placed directly over Wordsworth's

pew, and could best be seen and read from the very corner seat where he

used to sit. The pew is one of those occupying the centre of the church,

and is just across the aisle from the pulpit, and is the best of all for

the purpose of seeing and hearing the clergyman, and likewise as

convenient as any, from its neighborhood to the altar. On the other side

of the aisle, beneath the pulpit, is Lady Fleming's pew. This and one or

two others are curtained, Wordsworth's was not. I think I can bring up

his image in that corner seat of his pew--a white-headed, tall, spare

man, plain in aspect--better than in any other situation. The woman said

that she had known him very well, and that he had made some verses on a

sister of hers. She repeated the first lines, something about a lamb,

but neither S----- nor I remembered them.

On the walls of the chancel there are monuments to the Flemings, and

painted escutcheons of their arms; and along the side walls also, and on

the square pillars of the row of arches, there are other monuments,

generally of white marble, with the letters of the inscription blackened.

On these pillars, likewise, and in many places in the walls, were hung

verses from Scripture, painted on boards. At one of the doors was a

poor-box,--an elaborately carved little box, of oak, with the date 1648,

and the name of the church--St. Oswald's--upon it. The whole interior of

the edifice was plain, simple, almost to grimness,--or would have been

so, only that the foolish church-wardens, or other authority, have washed

it over with the same buff color with which they have overlaid the

exterior. It is a pity; it lightens it up, and desecrates it greatly,

especially as the woman says that there were formerly paintings on the

walls, now obliterated forever. I could have stayed in the old church

much longer, and could write much more about it, but there must be an end

to everything. Pacing it from the farther end to the elevation before

the altar, I found that it was twenty-five paces long.

On looking again at the Rothay, I find I did it some injustice; for at

the bridge, in its present swollen state, it is nearer twenty yards than

twenty feet across. Its waters are very clear, and it rushes along with

a speed which is delightful to see, after an acquaintance with the muddy

and sluggish Avon and Leam.

Since tea I have taken a stroll from the hotel in a different direction

from heretofore, and passed the Swan Inn, where Scott used to go daily to

get a draught of liquor, when he was visiting Wordsworth, who had no wine

nor other inspiriting fluid in his house. It stands directly on the

wayside,--a small, whitewashed house, with an addition in the rear that

seems to have been built since Scott's time. On the door is the painted

sign of a swan, and the name "Scott's Swan Hotel." I walked a

considerable distance beyond it, but, a shower cooling up, I turned back,

entered the inn, and, following the mistress into a snug little room, was

served with a glass of bitter ale. It is a very plain and homely inn,

and certainly could not have satisfied Scott's wants if he had required

anything very far-fetched or delicate in his potations. I found two

Westmoreland peasants in the room, with ale before them. One went away

almost immediately; but the other remained, and, entering into

conversation with him, he told me that he was going to New Zealand, and

expected to sail in September. I announced myself as an American, and he

said that a large party had lately gone from hereabouts to America; but

he seemed not to understand that there was any distinction between Canada

and the States. These people had gone to Quebec. He was a very civil,

well-behaved, kindly sort of person, of a simple character, which I took

to belong to the class and locality, rather than to himself individually.

I could not very well understand all that he said, owing to his

provincial dialect; and when he spoke to his own countrymen, or to the

women of the house, I really could but just catch a word here and there.

How long it takes to melt English down into a homogeneous mass! He told

me that there was a public library in Grasmere to which he has access in

common with the other inhabitants, and a reading-room connected with it,

where he reads The Times in the evening. There was no American smartness

in his mind. When I left the house, it was showering briskly; but the

drops quite ceased, and the clouds began to break away before I reached

my hotel, and I saw the new moon over my right shoulder.

July 21st.--We left Grasmere yesterday, after breakfast; it being a

delightful morning, with some clouds, but the cheerfullest sunshine on

great part of the mountainsides and on ourselves. We returned, in the

first place, to Ambleside, along the border of Grasmere Lake, which would

be a pretty little piece of water, with its steep and high surrounding

hills, were it not that a stubborn and straight-lined stone fence,

running along the eastern shore, by the roadside, quite spoils its

appearance. Rydal Water, though nothing can make a lake of it, looked

prettier and less diminutive than at the first view; and, in fact, I find

that it is impossible to know accurately how any prospect or other thing

looks, until after at least a second view, which always essentially

corrects the first. This, I think, is especially true in regard to

objects which we have heard much about, and exercised our imagination

upon; the first view being a vain attempt to reconcile our idea with the

reality, and at the second we begin to accept the thing for what it

really is. Wordsworth's situation is really a beautiful one; and Nab

Scaur behind his house rises with a grand, protecting air. We passed

Nab's cottage, in which De Quincey formerly lived, and where Hartley

Coleridge lived and died. It is a small, buff-tinted, plastered stone

cottage, immediately on the roadside, and originally, I should think, of

a very humble class; but it now looks as if persons of taste might some

time or other have sat down in it, and caused flowers to spring up about

it. It is very agreeably situated under the great, precipitous hill, and

with Rydal Water close at band, on the other side of the road. An

advertisement of lodgings to let was put up on this cottage.

I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as England--

this part of England, at least--on a fine summer morning. It makes one

think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright universal

verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered cottages,--not

cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring poor; such nice

villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for comfort and

beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and

after-thought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel

as if their children might live in them also, and so they plant trees to

overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against

their walls, and thus live for the future in another sense than we

Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes everything

moist, and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as

human life and vegetable life is so apt to be with us. Certainly,

England can present a more attractive face than we can; even in its

humbler modes of life, to say nothing of the beautiful lives that might

be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose gateways, with

broad, smooth gravelled drives leading through them, one sees every mile

or two along the road, winding into some proud seclusion. All this is

passing away, and society most assume new relations; but there is no harm

in believing that there has been something very good in English life,--

good for all classes while the world was in a state out of which these

forms naturally grew.

Passing through Ambleside, our phaeton and pair turned towards Ullswater,

which we were to reach through the Pass of Kirkstone. This is some three

or four miles from Ambleside, and as we approached it the road kept

ascending higher and higher, the hills grew more bare, and the country

lost its soft and delightful verdure. At last the road became so steep

that J----- and I alighted to walk. This is the aspiring road that

Wordsworth speaks of in his ode; it passes through the gorge of

precipitous hills,--or almost precipitous,--too much so for even the

grass to grow on many portions, which are covered with gray smugly

stones; and I think this pass, in its middle part, must have looked just

the same when the Romans marched through it as it looks now. No trees

could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the English

climate can generate no available soil. I do not know that I have seen

anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked

mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. The notch of

the White Mountains, as I remember it in my youthful days, is more

wonderful and richly picturesque, but of quite a different character.

About the centre and at the highest point of the pass stands an old stone

building of mean appearance, with the usual sign of an alehouse,

"Licensed to retail foreign spirits, ale, and tobacco," over the door,

and another small sign, designating it as the highest inhabitable house

in England. It is a chill and desolate place for a residence. They keep

a visitor's book here, and we recorded our names in it, and were not

too sorry to leave the mean little hovel, smelling as it did of

tobacco-smoke, and possessing all other characteristics of the humblest

alehouse on the level earth.

The Kirkstone, which gives the pass its name, is not seen in approaching

from Ambleside, until some time after you begin to descend towards

Brothers' Water. When the driver first pointed it out, a little way up

the hill on our left, it looked no more than a bowlder of a ton or two in

weight, among a hundred others nearly as big; and I saw hardly any

resemblance to a church or church-spire, to which the fancies of past

generations have likened it. As we descended the pass, however, and left

the stone farther and farther behind, it continued to show itself, and

assumed a more striking and prominent aspect, standing out clearly

relieved against the sky, so that no traveller would fail to observe it,

where there are so few defined objects to attract notice, amid the naked

monotony of the stern hills; though, indeed, if I had taken it for any

sort of an edifice, it would rather have been for a wayside inn or a

shepherd's hut than for a church. We lost sight of it, and again beheld

it more and more brought out against the sky, by the turns of the road,

several times in the course of our descent. There is a very fine view of

Brothers' Water, shut in by steep hills, as we go down Kirkstone Pass.

At about half past twelve we reached Patterdale, at the foot of

Ullswater, and here took luncheon. The hotels are mostly very good all

through this region, and this deserved that character. A black-coated

waiter, of more gentlemanly appearance than most Englishmen, yet taking a

sixpence with as little scruple as a lawyer would take his fee; the

mistress, in lady-like attire, receiving us at the door, and waiting upon

us to the carriage-steps; clean, comely housemaids everywhere at hand,--

all appliances, in short, for being comfortable, and comfortable, too,

within one's own circle. And, on taking leave, everybody who has done

anything for you, or who might by possibility have done anything, is to

be feed. You pay the landlord enough, in all conscience; and then you

pay all his servants, who have been your servants for the time. But, to

say the truth, there is a degree of the same kind of annoyance in an

American hotel, although it is not so much an acknowledged custom. Here,

in the houses where attendance is not charged in the bill, no wages are

paid by the host to those servants--chambermaid, waiter, and boots--who

come into immediate contact with travellers. The drivers of the cars,

phaetons, and flys are likewise unpaid, except by their passengers, and

claim threepence a mile with the same sense of right as their masters in

charging for the vehicles and horses. When you come to understand this

claim, not as an appeal to your generosity, but as an actual and

necessary part of the cost of the journey, it is yielded to with a more

comfortable feeling; and the traveller has really option enough, as to

the amount which he will give, to insure civility and good behavior on

the driver's part.

Ullswater is a beautiful lake, with steep hills walling it about, so

steep, on the eastern side, that there seems hardly room for a road to

run along the base. We passed up the western shore, and turned off from

it about midway, to take the road towards Keswick. We stopped, however,

at Lyulph's Tower, while our chariot went on up a hill, and took a guide

to show us the way to Airey Force,--a small cataract, which is claimed as

private property, and out of which, no doubt, a pretty little revenue is

raised. I do not think that there can be any rightful appropriation, as

private property, of objects of natural beauty. The fruits of the land,

and whatever human labor can produce from it, belong fairly enough to the

person who has a deed or a lease; but the beautiful is the property of

him who can hive it and enjoy it. It is very unsatisfactory to think of

a cataract under lock and key. However, we were shown to Airey Force by

a tall and graceful mountain-maid, with a healthy cheek, and a step that

had no possibility of weariness in it. The cascade is an irregular

streak of foamy water, pouring adown a rude shadowy glen. I liked well

enough to see it; but it is wearisome, on the whole, to go the rounds of

what everybody thinks it necessary to see. It makes me a little ashamed.

It is somewhat as if we were drinking out of the same glass, and eating

from the same dish, as a multitude of other people.

Within a few miles of Keswick, we passed along at the foot of Saddleback,

and by the entrance of the Vale of St. John, and down the valley, on one

of the slopes, we saw the Enchanted Castle. Thence we drove along by the

course of the Greta, and soon arrived at Keswick, which lies at the base

of Skiddaw, and among a brotherhood of picturesque eminences, and is

itself a compact little town, with a market-house, built of the old

stones of the Earl of Derwentwater's ruined castle, standing in the

centre,--the principal street forking into two as it passes it. We

alighted at the King's Arms, and went in search of Southey's residence,

which we found easily enough, as it lies just on the outskirts of the

town. We inquired of a group of people, two of whom, I thought, did not

seem to know much about the matter; but the third, an elderly man,

pointed it out at once,--a house surrounded by trees, so as to be seen

only partially, and standing on a little eminence, a hundred yards or so

from the road.

We went up a private lane that led to the rear of the place, and so

penetrated quite into the back-yard without meeting anybody,--passing a

small kennel, in which were two hounds, who gazed at us, but neither

growled nor wagged their tails. The house is three stories high, and

seems to have a great deal of room in it, so as not to discredit its

name, "Greta Hall,"--a very spacious dwelling for a poet. The windows

were nearly all closed; there were no signs of occupancy, but a general

air of neglect. S-----, who is bolder than I in these matters, ventured

through what seemed a back garden gate, and I soon heard her in

conversation with some man, who now presented himself, and proved to be a

gardener. He said he had formerly acted in that capacity for Southey,

although a gardener had not been kept by him as a regular part of his

establishment. This was an old man with an odd crookedness of legs, and

strange, disjointed limp. S----- had told him that we were Americans, and

he took the idea that we had come this long distance, over sea and land,

with the sole purpose of seeing Southey's residence, so that he was

inclined to do what he could towards exhibiting it. This was but little;

the present occupant (a Mr. Radday, I believe the gardener called him)

being away, and the house shut up.

But he showed us about the grounds, and allowed us to peep into the

windows of what had been Southey's library, and into those of another of

the front apartments, and showed us the window of the chamber in the

rear, in which Southey died. The apartments into which we peeped looked

rather small and low,--not particularly so, but enough to indicate an old

building. They are now handsomely furnished, and we saw over one of the

fireplaces an inscription about Southey; and in the corner of the same

room stood a suit, of bright armor. It is taller than the country-houses

of English gentlemen usually are, and it is even stately. All about, in

front, beside it and behind, there is a great profusion of trees, most of

which were planted by Southey, who came to live here more than fifty

years ago, and they have, of course, grown much more shadowy now than he

ever beheld them; for he died about fourteen years since. The grounds

are well laid out, and neatly kept, with the usual lawn and gravelled

walks, and quaint little devices in the ornamental way. These may be of

later date than Southey's time. The gardener spoke respectfully of

Southey, and of his first wife, and observed that "it was a great loss to

the neighborhood when that family went down."

The house stands directly above the Greta, the murmur of which is audible

all about it; for the Greta is a swift little river, and goes on its way

with a continual sound, which has both depth and breadth. The gardener

led us to a walk along its banks, close by the Hall, where he said

Southey used to walk for hours and hours together. He might, indeed, get

there from his study in a moment. There are two paths, one above the

other, well laid out on the steep declivity of the high bank; and there

is such a very thick shade of oaks and elms, planted by Southey himself

over the bank, that all the ground and grass were moist, although it had

been a sunny day. It is a very sombre walk; not many glimpses of the sky

through those dense boughs. The Greta is here, perhaps, twenty yards

across, and very dark of hue, and its voice is melancholy and very

suggestive of musings and reveries; but I should question whether it were

favorable to any settled scheme of thought. The gardener told us that

there used to be a pebbly beach on the margin of the river, and that it

was Southey's habit to sit and write there, using a tree of peculiar

shape for a table. An alteration in the current of the river has swept

away the beach, and the tree, too, has fallen. All these things were

interesting to me, although Southey was not, I think, a picturesque man,

--not one whose personal character takes a strong hold on the

imagination. In these walks he used to wear a pair of shoes heavily

clamped with iron; very ponderous they must have been, from the

particularity with which the gardener mentioned them.

The gardener took leave of us at the front entrance of the grounds, and,

returning to the King's Arms, we ordered a one-horse fly for the fall of

Lodore. Our drive thither was along the banks of Derwentwater, and it is

as beautiful a road, I imagine, as can be found in England or anywhere

else. I like Derwentwater the best of all the lakes, so far as I have

yet seen them. Skiddaw lies at the head of a long even ridge of

mountains, rising into several peaks, and one higher than the rest. On

the eastern side there are many noble eminences, and on the west, along

which we drove, there is a part of the way a lovely wood, and nearly the

whole distance a precipitous range of lofty cliffs, descending sheer down

without any slope, except what has been formed in the lapse of ages by

the fall of fragments, and the washing down of smaller stones. The

declivity thus formed along the base of the cliffs is in some places

covered with trees or shrubs; elsewhere it is quite bare and barren. The

precipitous parts of the cliffs are very grand; the whole scene, indeed,

might be characterized as one of stern grandeur with an embroidery of

rich beauty, without lauding it too much. All the sternness of it is

softened by vegetative beauty wherever it can possibly be thrown in; and

there is not here, so strongly as along Windermere, evidence that human

art has been helping out Nature. I wish it were possible to give any

idea of the shapes of the hills; with these, at least, man has nothing to

do, nor ever will have anything to do. As we approached the bottom of

the lake, and of the beautiful valley in which it lies, we saw one hill

that seemed to crouch down like a Titanic watch-dog, with its rear

towards the spectator, guarding the entrance to the valley. The great

superiority of these mountains over those of New England is their variety

and definiteness of shape, besides the abundance everywhere of water

prospects, which are wanting among our own hills. They rise up

decidedly, and each is a hill by itself, while ours mingle into one

another, and, besides, have such large bases that you can tell neither

where they begin nor where they end. Many of these Cumberland mountains

have a marked vertebral shape, so that they often look like a group of

huge lions, lying down with their backs turned toward each other. They

slope down steeply from narrow ridges; hence their picturesque seclusions

of valleys and dales, which subdivide the lake region into so many

communities. Our hills, like apple-dumplings in a dish, have no such

valleys as these.

There is a good inn at Lodore,--a small, primitive country inn, which has

latterly been enlarged and otherwise adapted to meet the convenience of

the guests brought thither by the fame of the cascade; but it is still a

country inn, though it takes upon itself the title of hotel.

We found pleasant rooms here, and established ourselves for the night.

From this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of Skiddaw at

the head of it. The cascade is within three or four minutes' walk,

through the garden gate, towards the cliff, at the base of which the inn

stands. The visitor would need no other guide than its own voice, which

is said to be audible sometimes at the distance of four miles. As we

were coming from Keswick, we caught glimpses of its white foam high up

the precipice; and it is only glimpses that can be caught anywhere,

because there is no regular sheet of falling water. Once, I think, it

must have fallen abruptly over the edge of the long line of precipice

that here extends along parallel with the shore of the lake; but, in the

course of time, it has gnawed and sawed its way into the heart of the

cliff,--this persistent little stream,--so that now it has formed a rude

gorge, adown which it hurries and tumbles in the wildest way, over the

roughest imaginable staircase. Standing at the bottom of the fall, you

have a far vista sloping upward to the sky, with the water everywhere as

white as snow, pouring and pouring down, now on one side of the gorge,

now on the other, among immense bowlders, which try to choke its passage.

It does not attempt to leap over these huge rocks, but finds its way in

and out among then, and finally gets to the bottom after a hundred

tumbles. It cannot be better described than in Southey's verses, though

it is worthy of better poetry than that. After all, I do not know that

the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of

the scene; for it is very grand,--this fissure through the cliff,--with a

steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the

other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on

which trees and shrubbery have grown. The right-hand precipice, however,

has shelves affording sufficient hold for small trees, but nowhere does

it slant. If it were not for the white little stream falling gently

downward, and for the soft verdure upon either precipice, and even along

the very pathway of the cascade, it would be a very stern vista up that

gorge.

I shall not try to describe it any more. It has not been praised too

much, though it may have been praised amiss. I went thither again in the

morning, and climbed a good way up, through the midst of its rocky

descent, and I think I could have reached the top in this way. It is

remarkable that the bounds of the water, from one step of its broken

staircase to another, give an impression of softness and gentleness; but

there are black, turbulent pools among the great bowlders, where the

stream seems angry at the difficulties which it meets with. Looking

upward in the sunshine, I could see a rising mist, and I should not

wonder if a speck of rainbow were sometimes visible. I noticed a small

oak in the bed of the cascade, and there is a lighter vegetation

scattered about.

At noon we took a car for Portinscale, and drove back along the road to

Keswick, through which we passed, stopping to get a perhaps of letters at

the post-office, and reached Portinscale, which is a mile from Keswick.

After dinner we walked over a bridge, and through a green lane, to the

church where Southey is buried. It is a white church, of Norman

architecture, with a low, square tower. As we approached, we saw two

persons entering the portal, and, following them in, we found the sexton,

who was a tall, thin old man, with white hair, and an intelligent,

reverent face, showing the edifice to a stout, red-faced, self-important,

good-natured John Bull of a gentleman. Without any question on our part,

the old sexton immediately led us to Southey's monument, which is placed

in a side aisle, where there is not breadth for it to stand free of the

wall; neither is it in a very good light. But, it seemed to me a good

work of art,--a recumbent figure of white marble, on a couch, the drapery

of which he has drawn about him,--being quite enveloped in what may be a

shroud. The sculptor has not intended to represent death, for the figure

lies on its side, and has a book in its hand, and the face is lifelike,

and looks full of expression,--a thin, high-featured, poetic face, with a

finely proportioned head and abundant hair. It represents Southey

rightly, at whatever age he died, in the full maturity of manhood, when

he was strongest and richest. I liked the statue, and wished that it lay

in a broader aisle, or in the chancel, where there is an old tomb of a

knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family, who have held the place of honor

long enough to yield it now to a poet. Southey's sculptor was Lough. I

must not forget to mention that John Bull, climbing on a bench, to get a

better view of the statue, tumbled off with a racket that resounded

irreverently through the church.

The old, white-headed, thin sexton was a model man of his class, and

appeared to take a loving and cheerful interest in the building, and in

those who, from age to age, have worshipped and been buried there. It is

a very ancient and interesting church. Within a few years it has been

thoroughly repaired as to the interior, and now looks as if it might

endure ten more centuries; and I suppose we see little that is really

ancient, except the double row of Norman arches, of light freestone, that

support the oaken beams and rafters of the roof. All the walls, however,

are venerable, and quite preserve the identity of the edifice. There is

a stained-glass window of modern manufacture, and in one of the side

windows, set amidst plain glass, there is a single piece, five hundred

years old, representing St. Anthony, very finely executed, though it

looks a little faded. Along the walls, on each side, between the arched

windows, there are marble slabs affixed, with inscriptions to the

memories of those who used to occupy the seats beneath. I remember none

of great antiquity, nor any old monument, except that in the chancel,

over the knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family. This consists of a

slab of stone, on four small stone pillars, about two feet high. The

slab is inlaid with a brass plate, on which is sculptured the knight in

armor, and the lady in the costume of Elizabeth's time, exceedingly well

done and well preserved, and each figure about eighteen inches in length.

The sexton showed us a rubbing of them on paper. Under the slab, which,

supported by the low stone pillars, forms a canopy for them, lie two

sculptured figures of stone, of life size, and at full length,

representing the same persons; but I think the sculptor was hardly equal

in his art to the engraver.

The most-curious antique relic in the church is the font. The bowl is

very capacious, sufficiently so to admit of the complete immersion of a

child of two or three months old. On the outside, in several

compartments, there are bas-reliefs of Scriptural and symbolic subjects,

--such as the tree of life, the word proceeding out of God's mouth, the

crown of thorns,--all in the quaintest taste, sculptured by some hand of

a thousand years ago, and preserving the fancies of monkish brains, in

stone. The sexton was very proud of this font and its sculpture, and

took a kindly personal interest, in showing it; and when we had spent as

much time as we could inside, he led us to Southey's grave in the

churchyard. He told us that he had known Southey long and well, from

early manhood to old age; for he was only twenty-nine when he came to

Keswick to reside. He had known Wordsworth too, and Coleridge, and

Lovell; and he had seen Southey and Wordsworth walking arm in arm

together in that churchyard. He seemed to revere Southey's memory, and

said that he had been much lamented, and that as many as a hundred people

came to the churchyard when he was buried. He spoke with great praise of

Mrs. Southey, his first wife, telling of her charity to the poor, and how

she was a blessing to the neighborhood; but he said nothing in favor of

the second Mrs. Southey, and only mentioned her selling the library, and

other things, after her husband's death, and going to London. Yet I

think she was probably a good woman, and meets with less than justice

because she took the place of another good woman, and had not time and

opportunity to prove herself as good. As for Southey himself, my idea

is, that few better or more blameless men have ever lived; but he seems

to lack color, passion, warmth, or something that should enable me to

bring him into close relation with myself. The graveyard where his body

lies is not so rural and picturesque as that where Wordsworth is buried;

although Skiddaw rises behind it, and the Greta is murmuring at no very

great distance away. But the spot itself has a somewhat bare and bold

aspect, with no shadow of trees, no shrubbery.

Over his grave there is a ponderous, oblong block of slate, a native

mineral of this region, as hard as iron, and which will doubtless last

quite as long as Southey's works retain any vitality in English

literature. It is not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy

or graceful about it,--and, indeed, there cannot be many men so solid and

matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is

much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his

mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over

Southey's. Most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some

erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem to have been recently

erected.

We now returned to the hotel, and took a car for the valley of St. John.

The sky seemed to portend rain in no long time, and Skiddaw had put on

his cap; but the people of the hotel and the driver said that there would

be no rain this afternoon, and their opinion proved correct. After

driving a few miles, we again cane within sight of the Enchanted Castle.

It stands rather more than midway adown the declivity of one of the

ridges that form the valley to the left, as you go southward, and its

site would have been a good one for a fortress, intended to defend the

lower entrance of this mountain defile. At a proper distance, it looks

not unlike the gray dilapidation of a Gothic castle, which has been

crumbling and crumbling away for ages, until Time might be supposed to

have imperceptibly stolen its massive pile from man, and given it back to

Nature; its towers and battlements and arched entrances being so much

defaced and decayed that all the marks of human labor had nearly been

obliterated, and the angles of the hewn stone rounded away, while mosses

and weeds and bushes grow over it as freely as over a natural ledge of

rocks. It is conceivable that in some lights, and in some states of the

atmosphere, a traveller, at the entrance of the valley, might really

imagine that he beheld a castle here; but, for myself, I must acknowledge

that it required a willing fancy to make me see it. As we drew nearer,

the delusion did not immediately grow less strong; but, at length, we

found ourselves passing at the foot of the declivity, and, behold! it was

nothing but an enormous ledge of rock, coming squarely out of the

hillside, with other parts of the ledge cropping out in its vicinity.

Looking back, after passing, we saw a knoll or hillock, of which the

castled rock is the bare face. There are two or three stone cottages

along the roadside, beneath the magic castle, and within the enchanted

ground. Scott, in the Bridal of Triermain, locates the castle in the

middle of the valley, and makes King Arthur ride around it, which any

mortal would have great difficulty in doing. This vale of St. John has

very striking scenery. Blencathra shuts it in to the northward, lying

right across the entrance; and on either side there are lofty crags and

declivities, those to the west being more broken and better wooded than

the ridge to the eastward, which stretches along for several miles,

steep, high, and bare, producing only grass enough for sheep pasture,

until it rises into the dark brow of Helvellyn. Adown this ridge, seen

afar, like a white ribbon, comes here and there a cascade, sending its

voice before it, which distance robs of all its fury, and makes it the

quietest sound in the world; and while you see the foamy leap of its

upper course a mile or two away, you may see and hear the selfsame little

brook babbling through a field, and passing under the arch of a rustic

bridge beneath your feet. It is a deep seclusion, with mountains and

crags on all sides.

About a mile beyond the castle we stopped at a little wayside inn, the

King's Head, and put up for the night. This, I believe, is the only inn

which I have found in England--the only one where I have eaten and slept

--that does not call itself a hotel. It is very primitive in its

arrangements,--a long, low, whitewashed, unadorned, and ugly cottage of

two stories. At one extremity is a barn and cow-house, and next to these

the part devoted to the better class of guests, where we had our parlor

and chambers, contiguous to which is the kitchen and common room, paved

with flagstones,--and, lastly, another barn and stable; all which

departments are not under separate roofs, but under the same long

contiguity, and forming the same building. Our parlor opens immediately

upon the roadside, without any vestibule. The house appears to be of

some antiquity, with beams across the low ceilings; but the people made

us pretty comfortable at bed and board, and fed us with ham and eggs,

veal-steaks, honey, oatcakes, gooseberry-tarts, and such cates and

dainties,--making a moderate charge for all. The parlor was adorned with

rude engravings. I remember only a plate of the Duke of Wellington, at

three stages of his life; and there were minerals, delved, doubtless, out

of the hearts of the mountains, upon the mantel-piece. The chairs were

of an antiquated fashion, and had very capacious seats. We were waited

upon by two women, who looked and acted not unlike the countryfolk of New

England,--say, of New Hampshire,--except that these may have been more

deferential.

While we remained here, I took various walks to get a glimpse of

Helvellyn, and a view of Thirlmere,--which is rather two lakes than one,

being so narrow at one point as to be crossed by a foot-bridge. Its

shores are very picturesque, coming down abruptly upon it, and broken

into crags and prominences, which view their shaggy faces in its mirror;

and Helvellyn slopes steeply upward, from its southern shore, into the

clouds. On its eastern bank, near the foot-bridge, stands Armboth House,

which Miss Martineau says is haunted; and I saw a painted board at the

entrance of the road which leads to it advertising lodgings there. The

ghosts, of course, pay nothing for their accommodations.

At noon, on the day after our arrival, J----- and I went to visit the

Enchanted Castle; and we were so venturesome as to turn aside from the

road, and ascend the declivity towards its walls, which indeed we hoped

to surmount. It proved a very difficult undertaking, the site of the

fortress being much higher and steeper than we had supposed; but we did

clamber upon what we took for the most elevated portion, when lo! we

found that we had only taken one of the outworks, and that there was a

gorge of the hill betwixt us and the main walls; while the citadel rose

high above, at more than twice the elevation which we had climbed.

J----- wished to go on, and I allowed him to climb, till he appeared to

have reached so steep and lofty a height that he looked hardly bigger

than a monkey, and I should not at all have wondered had he come rolling

down to the base of the rock where I sat. But neither did he get

actually within the castle, though he might have done so but for a high

stone fence, too difficult for him to climb, which runs from the rock

along the hillside. The sheep probably go thither much oftener than any

other living thing, and to them we left the castle of St. John, with a

shrub waving from its battlements, instead of a banner.

After dinner we ordered a car for Ambleside, and while it was getting

ready, I went to look at the river of St. John, which, indeed, flows

close beside our inn, only just across the road, though it might well be

overlooked unless you specially sought for it. It is a brook brawling

over the stones, very much as brooks do in New England, only we never

think of calling them rivers there. I could easily have made a leap from

shore to shore, and J----- scrambled across on no better footing than a

rail. I believe I have complained of the want of brooks in other parts

of England, but there is no want of them here, and they are always

interesting, being of what size they may.

We drove down the valley, and gazed at the vast slope of Helvellyn, and

at Thirlmere beneath it, and at Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, which

beheld themselves in it, and we cast many a look behind at Blencathra,

and that noble brotherhood of mountains out of the midst of which we

came. But, to say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed

to me that I had eaten a score of mountains, and quaffed as many lakes,

all in the space of two or three days,--and the natural consequence was a

surfeit. There was scarcely a single place in all our tour where I

should not have been glad to spend a month; but, by flitting so quickly

from one point to another, I lost all the more recondite beauties, and

had come away without retaining even the surface of much that I had seen.

I am slow to feel,--slow, I suppose, to comprehend, and, like the

anaconda, I need to lubricate any object a great deal before I can

swallow it and actually make it my own. Yet I shall always enjoy having

made this journey, and shall wonder the more at England, which

comprehends so much, such a rich variety, within its narrow bounds. If

England were all the world, it still would have been worth while for the

Creator to have made it, and mankind would have had no cause to find

fault with their abode; except that there is not room enough for so many

as might be happy here.

We left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as

long as we could at Blencathra, and Skiddaw over its shoulder, and the

clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. Passing by Dummail

Raise (which is a mound of stones over an old British king), we entered

Westmoreland, and soon had the vale of Grasmere before us, with the

church where Wordsworth lies, and Nab Scaur and Rydal Water farther on.

At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along

the eastern shore of Windermere. The superb scenery through which we had

been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we

should have thought it more than commonly interesting. Hawkshead is the

only village on our road,--a small, whitewashed old town, with a

whitewashed old Norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same

pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts. It was between seven

and eight o'clock when we reached Newby Bridge, and heard U----'s voice

greeting us, and saw her head, crowned with a wreath of flowers, looking

down at us, out of the window of our parlor.

And to-day, July 23d, I have written this most incomplete and

unsatisfactory record of what we have done and seen since Wednesday last.

I am pretty well convinced that all attempts at describing scenery,

especially mountain scenery, are sheer nonsense. For one thing, the

point of view being changed, the whole description, which you made up

from the previous point of view, is immediately falsified. And when you

have done your utmost, such items as those setting forth the scene in a

play,--"a mountainous country, in the distance a cascade tumbling over a

precipice, and in front a lake; on one side an ivy-covered cottage,"--

this dry detail brings the matter before one's mind's eyes more

effectually than all the art of word-painting.

July 27th.--We are still at Newby Bridge, and nothing has occurred of

remarkable interest, nor have we made any excursions, beyond moderate

walks. Two days have been rainy, and to-day there is more rain. We find

such weather as tolerable here as it would probably be anywhere; but it

passes rather heavily with the children,--and for myself, I should prefer

sunshine. Though Mr. White's books afford me some entertainment,

especially an odd volume of Ben Jonson's plays, containing "Volpone,"

"The Alchemist," "Bartholomew Fair," and others. "The Alchemist" is

certainly a great play. We watch all arrivals and other events from our

parlor window,--a stage-coach driving up four times in the twenty-four

hours, with its forlorn outsiders, all saturated with rain; the steamer,

from the head of the lake, landing a crowd of passengers, who stroll up

to the hotel, drink a glass of ale, lean over the parapet of the bridge,

gaze at the flat stones which pave the bottom of the Liver, and then

hurry back to the steamer again; cars, phaetons, horsemen, all damped and

disconsolate. There are a number of young men staying at the hotel, some

of whom go forth in all the rain, fishing, and come back at nightfall,

trudging heavily, but with creels on their backs that do not seem very

heavy. Yesterday was fair, and enlivened us a good deal. Returning from

a walk in the forenoon, I found a troop of yeomanry cavalry in the

stable-yard of the hotel. They were the North Lancashire Regiment, and

were on their way to Liverpool for the purpose of drill. Not being old

campaigners, their uniforms and accoutrements were in so much the finer

order, all bright, and looking span-new, and they themselves were a body

of handsome and stalwart young men; and it was pleasant to look at their

helmets, and red jackets and carbines, and steel scabbarded swords, and

gallant steeds,--all so martial in aspect,--and to know that they were

only play-soldiers, after all, and were never likely to do nor suffer any

warlike mischief. By and by their bugles sounded, and they trotted away,

wheeling over the ivy-grown stone bridge, and disappearing behind the

trees on the Milnethorpe road. Our host comes forth from the bar with a

bill, which he presents to an orderly-sergeant. He, the host, then tells

me that he himself once rode many years, a trooper, in this regiment, and

that all his comrades were larger men than himself. Yet Mr. Thomas White

is a good-sized man, and now, at all events, rather overweight for a

dragoon.

Yesterday came one of those bands of music that seem to itinerate

everywhere about the country. It consisted of a young woman who played

the harp, a bass-viol player, a fiddler, a flutist, and a bugler, besides

a little child, of whom, I suppose, the woman was the mother. They sat

down on a bench by the roadside, opposite the house, and played several

tunes, and by and by the waiter brought them a large pitcher of ale,

which they quaffed with apparent satisfaction; though they seemed to be

foreigners by their mustachios and sallow hue, and would perhaps have

preferred a vinous potation. One would like to follow these people

through their vagrant life, and see them in their social relations, and

overhear their talk with each other. All vagrants are interesting; and

there is a much greater variety of them here than in America,--people who

cast themselves on Fortune, and take whatever she gives without a

certainty of anything. I saw a travelling tinker yesterday,--a man with

a leather apron, and a string of skewers hung at his girdle, and a pack

over his shoulders, in which, no doubt, were his tools and materials of

trade.

It is remarkable what a natural interest everybody feels in fishing. An

angler from the bridge immediately attracts a group to watch his luck.

It is the same with J-----, fishing for minnows, on the platform near

which the steamer lands its passengers. By the by, U---- caught a minnow

last evening, and, immediately after, a good-sized perch,--her first

fish.

July 30th.--We left Newby Bridge, all of us, on Saturday, at twelve

o'clock, and steamed up the lake to Ambleside; a pretty good day as to

weather, but with a little tendency to shower. There was nothing new on

the lake, and no new impressions, as far as I can remember. At

Ambleside, S----- and nurse went shopping, after which we took a carriage

for Grasmere, and established ourselves at Brown's Hotel. I find that my

impressions from our previous sight of all these scenes do not change on

revision. They are very beautiful; but, if I must say it, I am a little

weary of them. We soon tire of things which we visit merely by way of

spectacle, and with which we have no real and permanent connection. In

such cases we very quickly wish the spectacle to be taken away, and

another substituted; at all events I do not care about seeing anything

more of the English lakes for at least a year.

Perhaps a part of my weariness is owing to the hotel-life which we lead.

At an English hotel the traveller feels as if everybody, from the

landlord downward, united in a joint and individual purpose to fleece

him, because all the attendants who come in contact with him are to be

separately considered. So, after paying, in the first instance, a very

heavy bill, for what would seem to cover the whole indebtedness, there

remain divers dues still to be paid, to no trifling amount, to the

landlord's servants,--dues not to be ascertained, and which you never can

know whether you have properly satisfied. You can know, perhaps, when

you have less than satisfied them, by the aspect of the waiter, which I

wish I could describe, not disrespectful in the slightest degree, but a

look of profound surprise, a gaze at the offered coin (which he

nevertheless pockets) as if he either did not see it, or did not know it,

or could not believe his eyesight;--all this, however, with the most

quiet forbearance, a Christian-like non-recognition of an unmerited wrong

and insult; and finally, all in a moment's space indeed, he quits you and

goes about his other business. If you have given him too much, you are

made sensible of your folly by the extra amount of his gratitude, and the

bows with which he salutes you from the doorstep. Generally, you cannot

very decidedly say whether you have been right or wrong; but, in almost

all cases, you decidedly feel that you have been fleeced. Then the

living at the best of English hotels, so far as my travels have brought

me acquainted with them, deserves but moderate praise, and is especially

lacking in variety. Nothing but joints, joints, joints; sometimes,

perhaps, a meat-pie, which, if you eat it, weighs upon your conscience,

with the idea that you have eaten the scraps of other people's dinners.

At the lake hotels, the fare is lamb and mutton and grout,--the latter

not always fresh, and soon tired of. We pay like nabobs, and are

expected to be content with plain mutton.

We spent the day yesterday at Grasmere, in quiet walks about the hotel;

and at a little past six in the afternoon, I took my departure in the

stage-coach for Windermere. The coach was greatly overburdened with

outside passengers,--fifteen in all, besides the four insiders, and one

of the fifteen formed the apex of an immense pile of luggage on the top.

It seems to me miraculous that we did not topple over, the road being so

hilly and uneven, and the driver, I suspect, none the steadier for his

visits to all the tap-rooms along the route from Cockermouth. There was

a tremendous vibration of the coach now and then; and I saw that, in case

of our going over, I should be flung headlong against the high stone

fence that bordered most of the road. In view of this I determined to

muffle my head in the folds of my thick shawl at the moment of overturn,

and as I could do no better for myself, I awaited my fate with

equanimity. As far as apprehension goes, I had rather travel from Maine

to Georgia by rail, than from Grasmere to Windermere by stage-coach.

At Lowwood, the landlady espied me from the window, and sent out a large

packet that had arrived by mail; but as it was addressed to some person

of the Christian name of William, I did not venture to open it. She

said, also, that a gentleman had been there, who very earnestly desired

to see me, and I have since had reason to suppose that this was

Allingham, the poet. We arrived at Windermere at half past seven, and

waited nearly an hour for the train to start. I took a ticket for

Lancaster, and talked there about the war with a gentleman in the

coffee-room, who took me for an Englishman, as most people do nowadays,

and I heard from him--as you may from all his countrymen--an expression

of weariness and dissatisfaction with the whole business. These fickle

islanders! How differently they talked a year ago! John Bull sees now

that he never was in a worse predicament in his life; and yet it would

not take much to make him roar as bellicosely as ever. I went to bed at

eleven, and slept unquietly on feathers.

I had purposed to rise betimes, and see the town of Lancaster before

breakfast. But here I reckoned without my host; for, in the first place,

I had no water for my ablutions, and my boots were not brushed; and so I

could not get down stairs till the hour I named for my coffee and chops;

and, secondly, the breakfast was delayed half an hour, though promised

every minute. In fine, I had but just time to take a hasty walk round

Lancaster Castle, and see what I could of the town on my way,--a not very

remarkable town, built of stone, with taller houses than in the middle

shires of England, narrow streets up and down an eminence on which the

castle is situated, with the town immediately about it. The castle is a

satisfactory edifice, but so renovated that the walls look almost

entirely modern, with the exception of the fine old front, with the

statue of an armed warrior, very likely John of Gaunt himself, in a niche

over the Norman arch of the entrance. Close beside the castle stands an

old church.

The train left Lancaster at half past nine, and reached Liverpool at

twelve, over as flat and uninteresting a country as I ever travelled. I

have betaken myself to the Rock Ferry Hotel, where I am as comfortable as

I could be anywhere but at home; but it is rather comfortless to think of

hone as three years off, and three thousand miles away. With what a

sense of utter weariness, not fully realized till then, we shall sink

down on our own threshold, when we reach it. The moral effect of being

without a settled abode is very wearisome.

Our coachman from Grasmere to Windermere looked like a great beer-barrel,

oozy with his proper liquor. I suppose such solid soakers never get

upset.