The Graystock road, which we took for the first five or six miles,
is uninteresting, and offers nothing worthy of attention, before the
approach to the castle, the seat of the Duke of Norfolk. The appearance
of this from the road is good; a gray building, with gothic towers,
seated in a valley among lawns and woods, that stretch, with great
pomp of shade, to gently-rising hills. Behind these, Saddleback,
huge, gray and barren, rises with all its ridgy lines; a grand and
simple back-ground, giving exquisite effect to the dark woods below.
Such is the height of the mountain, that, though eight or ten miles
off, it appeared, as we approached the castle, almost to impend over
it. Southward from Saddleback, a multitude of pointed summits crowd
the horizon; and it is most interesting, after leaving Graystock, to
observe their changing attitudes, as you advance, and the gradual
disclosure of their larger features. Perhaps, a sudden display of the
sublimest scenery, however full, imparts less emotion, than a gradually
increasing view of it; when expectation takes the highest tone, and
imagination finishes the sketch.
About two miles beyond Graystock, the moorlands commence, and, as far
as simple greatness constitutes sublimity, this was, indeed, a sublime
prospect; less so only than that from Shap-fell itself, where the
mountains are not so varied in their forms and are plainer in their
grandeur. We were on a vast plain, if plain that may be called, which
swells into long undulations, surrounded by an amphitheatre of heathy
mountains, that seem to have been shook by some grand convulsion of
the earth, and tumbled around in all shapes. Not a tree, a hedge, and
seldom even a stone wall, broke the grandeur of their lines; what was
not heath was only rock and gray crags; and a shepherd's hut, or his
flocks, browsing on the steep sides of the fells, or in the narrow
vallies, that opened distantly, was all that diversified the vast
scene. Saddleback spread his skirts westward along the plain, and then
reared himself in terrible and lonely majesty. In the long perspective
beyond, were the crowding points of the fells round Keswick,
Borrowdale, and the vales, of St. John and Leyberthwaite, stretching
away to those near Grasmere. The weather was in solemn harmony with
the scenery; long shadows swept over the hills, followed by gleaming
lights. Tempestuous gusts alone broke the silence. Now and then, the
sun's rays had a singular appearance; pouring, from under clouds,
between the tops of fells into some deep vale, at a distance, as into a
focus.
This is the very region, which the wild fancy of a poet, like
Shakespeare, would people with witches, and shew them at their
incantations, calling spirits from the clouds and spectres from the
earth.
On the now lonely plains of this vast amphitheatre, the Romans had two
camps, and their Eagle spread its wings over a scene worthy of its
own soarings. The lines of these encampments may still be traced on
that part of the plain, called Hutton Moor, to the north of the high
road; and over its whole extent towards Keswick a Roman way has been
discovered. Funereal urns have also been dug up here, and an altar of
Roman form, but with the inscription obliterated.
Nearer Saddleback, we perceived crags and heath mingling on its
precipices, and its base broken into a little world of mountains,
green with cultivation. White farms, each with its grove to shelter it
from the descending gusts, corn and pastures of the brightest verdure
enlivened the skirts of the mountain all round, climbing towards
the dark heath and crags, or spreading downwards into the vale of
Threlkeld, where the slender Lowther shews his shining stream.
Leaving Hutton Moor, the road soon began to ascend the skirts of
Saddleback, and passed between green hillocks, where cattle appeared
most elegantly in the mountain scene, under the crags, or sipping at
the clear stream, that gushed from the rocks, and wound to the vale
below. Such crystal rivulets crossed our way continually, as we rose
upon the side of Saddleback, which towers abruptly on the right,
and, on the left, sinks as suddenly into the vale of Threlkeld, with
precipices sometimes little less than tremendous. This mountain is
the northern boundary of the vale in its whole length to Keswick, the
points of whose fells close the perspective. Rocky heights guard it
to the south. The valley between is green, without wood, and, with
much that is grand, has little beautiful, till near its conclusion;
where, more fertile and still more wild, it divides into three narrower
vallies, two of which disclose scenes of such sublime severity as even
our long view of Saddleback had not prepared us to expect.
The first of these is the vale of St. John, a narrow, cultivated spot,
lying in the bosom of tremendous rocks, that impend over it in masses
of gray crag, and often resemble the ruins of castles. These rocks
are overlooked by still more awful mountains, that fall in abrupt
lines, and close up the vista, except where they also are commanded
by the vast top of Helvellyn. On every side, are images of desolation
and stupendous greatness, closing upon a narrow line of pastoral
richness; a picture of verdant beauty, seen through a frame of rock
work. It is between the cliffs of Threlkeld-fell and the purple ridge
of Nadale-fell, that this vale seems to repose in its most silent
and perfect peace. No village and scarcely a cottage disturbs its
retirement. The flocks, that feed at the feet of the cliffs, and the
steps of a shepherd, "in this office of his mountain watch," are all,
that haunt the "dark sequestered nook."
The vale of Nadale runs parallel with that of St. John, from which it
is separated by the ridge of Nadale-fell, and has the same style of
character, except that it is terminated by a well wooded mountain.
Beyond this, the perspective is overlooked by the fells, that terminate
the vale of St. John.
The third valley, opening from the head of Threlkeld, winds along the
feet of Saddleback and Skiddaw to Keswick, the approach to which, with
all its world of rocky summits, the lake being still sunk below the
sight, is sublime beyond the power of description. Within three miles
of Keswick, Skiddaw unfolds itself, close behind Saddleback; their
skirts unite, but the former is less huge and of very different form
from the last; being more pointed and seldomer broken into precipices,
it darts upward with a vast sweep into three spiry summits, two of
which only are seen from this road, and shews sides dark with heath and
little varied with rock. Such is its aspect from the Penrith road; from
other stations its attitude, shape and colouring are very different,
though its alpine terminations are always visible.
Threlkeld itself is a small village, about thirteen miles from Penrith,
with a very humble inn, at which those, who have passed the bleak sides
of Saddleback, and those, who are entering upon them, may rejoice to
rest. We had been blown about, for some hours, in an open chaise,
and hoped for more refreshment than could be obtained; but had the
satisfaction, which was, indeed, general in these regions, of observing
the good intentions, amounting almost to kindness, of the cottagers
towards their guests. They have nearly always some fare, which less
civility than theirs might render acceptable; and the hearth blazes in
their clean sanded parlours, within two minutes after you enter them.
Some sort of preserved fruit is constantly served after the repast,
with cream, an innocent luxury, for which no animal has died.
It is not only from those, who are to gain by strangers, but from
almost every person, accidentally accosted by a question, that this
favourable opinion will be formed, as to the kind and frank manners
of the people. We were continually remarking, between Lancaster and
Keswick, that severe as the winter might be in these districts, from
the early symptoms of it then apparent, the conduct of the people would
render it scarcely unpleasant to take the same journey in the depths of
December.
In these countries, the farms are, for the most part, small, and the
farmers and their children work in the same fields with their servants.
Their families have thus no opportunities of temporary insight into the
society, and luxuries of the great, and have none of those miseries,
which dejected vanity and multiplied wishes inflict upon the pursuers
of the higher ranks. They are also without the baseness, which such
pursuers usually have, of becoming abject before persons of one class,
that by the authority of an apparent connection with them, they may
be insolent to those of another; and are free from the essential
humiliation of shewing, by a general and undistinguishing admiration
of all persons richer than themselves, that the original distinctions
between virtue and vice have been erased from their minds by the habit
of comparing the high and the low.
The true consciousness of independence, which labour and an
ignorance of the vain appendages, falsely called luxuries, give to
the inhabitants of these districts, is probably the cause of the
superiority, perceived by strangers in their tempers and manners,
over those of persons, apparently better circumstanced. They have
no remembrance of slights, to be revenged by insults; no hopes from
servility, nor irritation from the desire of unattainable distinctions.
Where, on the contrary, the encouragement of artificial wants has
produced dependence, and mingled with the fictitious appearance of
wealth many of the most real evils of poverty, the benevolence of the
temper flies with the simplicity of the mind. There is, perhaps, not
a more odious prospect of human society, than where an ostentatious,
manœuvring and corrupted peasantry, taking those, who induce them to
crimes, for the models of their morality, mimic the vices, to which
they were not born, and attempts the coarse covering of cunning and
insolence for practices, which it is a science and frequently an object
of education to conceal by flagitious elegancies. Such persons form in
the country a bad copy of the worst London society; the vices, without
the intelligence, and without the assuaging virtues.