of Troutbeck. Troutbeck is a funny misnomer for the rivulet so named,
for not a trout has ever been found in it. But for a typically exquisite
village, no dream of painter or poet can rival it. The cottages, with
their numerous gables, seem to have been built on some model conceived
by the rarest poetical genius. They are of the stone and slate of the
country; age has given them "a green radiance" and bathed them in the
lustre of lichens. The porches are of meeting tree-stems or reclining
cliffs, and are dripping with roses and matted with virgin bower.
Nowhere else in the world is there "a mile-long congregation of such
rural dwellings, dropped down just where a painter or poet would wish
them, and bound together by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamores, by
flower-gardens and fruit-orchards rich as those of the Hesperides."...
There are places we visit and forget, but this is never the case with
Ambleside; walk through its streets, and they become forever a part of
the spirit's still domains. John Ruskin, in his "Characteristics of
Nature," has referred to the peculiar influence which is exerted upon
people who live in a neighborhood where granite is abundant; and
Wordsworth tells us that
"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach us more of man,
Of moral evil, and of good,
Than all the sages can."
If this be true, then what influence must be morally exerted over those
who dwell in such a bower of Paradise as Ambleside!
The vale of Windermere is watered by two little rivers, the Rothay and
Brathay. They unite a few yards above the head of the lake, and enter it
together. In the spawning season a singular sight may be witnessed at
this spot: the trout and char, for which Windermere is famous, separate
where the rivers meet; the char go up Brathay to spawn, the trout all go
up Rothay.
The most charming way to see the vale of Ambleside is to saunter about
it; to walk to Stock Ghyll Force and look at the old mill made famous
by the painting of Birket Foster; to lean over Rothay Bridge and Pelter
Bridge and dream away the hours on the shores of the wildly-sylvan
Rydalmere; or to go into Rydal Park and lose ourselves among the cooing
of cushats and the shrill cries of blackbirds. Stock Ghyll Force is
worth seeing. The word "force" is one of the few words of the past
still lingering in secluded places: it signifies to "rush thoroughly:"
the waters fall from a height of seventy feet, and make a terrific noise
as they rush in two channels down the rocky gorge.
The slopes are covered with the rarest ferns, probably most of them
indigenous to the soil, for we were told that few of them lived if
transplanted from it. The path leading to the falls now belongs to the
town of Ambleside, but a year or two ago it was in the possession of a
gentleman who purchased the property at an auction. It had always been
free and open to the public, but this speculative individual bought up
the waterfall and hemmed it in with a fence. He then made a charge for
admission. The townspeople were indignant; a sum of a thousand pounds
was raised, and the man bought out at double the amount. The toll for
the present is charged, but it will be abolished as soon as the other
thousand has been collected,--a consummation fully expected during the
present year.
The spirits of the great and good walk the lovely lanes and climb the
hills with us, for all around Ambleside is haunted ground. Just outside
is the ivy-covered house so long the home of Harriet Martineau, one of
the bravest and hardest-working women that ever lived.
"Day by day our memory fades
From out the circle of the hills,"
but the memory of the invalid deaf lady, so loving, so simple, so
neighborly, so old in years, so young in heart, is one that will not
soon be forgotten, even in the land of Wordsworth and Southey and
Arnold.
A little farther, Fox How nestles at the foot of a craggy height. This
was for many years the home of Dr. Arnold; and not far away is Fox
Ghyll, a beautiful villa belonging to the Right Honorable W. E.
Forster, who, it will be remembered, married a daughter of Dr. Arnold's.
Mr. Forster spends a great deal of his time here, glad to escape the
"madding crowd" and the bickering and fever of political life.
A lovely drive through "a spot made for nature by herself" brought us to
Rydal Mount, so long the home of Wordsworth. He went there in 1813, and
at that time the lakes were hardly known. The poet Gray was the only
eminent Englishman who visited them before the present century, and he
complained that "the great forests and the total want of communication
was a barrier he could not surmount." Upon Goldsmith they made no
impression; and Tickell, born within a mile of Derwentwater, has not a
line in their praise, though he wrote a long poem on Kensington Gardens.
But in 1813 Englishmen were compelled to travel in their own country,
for Napoleon had closed the continent of Europe to them, or, as a
Westmoreland woman expressed it, "there was sic a deal of uneasiness i'
France."
And here I may notice, in passing, the peculiar habit of _understating_
everything, so characteristic of Westmoreland people. Where a Yorkshire
man would say unequivocally, "The fellow is a scoundrel," the
Westmoreland man would remark. "There were a deal o' folks more
particler about doin' reet nor him." A bad man is a bad man all the
world over, except in Westmoreland: there he is "a varra moderate chap."
All over the world, when it rains as hard as it can, people do not
scruple to say, "It rains hard;" but a Westmoreland man only admits,
"It's softish."...
At Rydal Mount, Wordsworth lived nearly forty years, roaming over
the mountains or sitting down by some lonely tarn to write his
"solemn-thoughted idylls;" for he seldom wrote in-doors. A visitor once
asked to see his study, and a servant showed her a room containing a
number of books. "This is the master's library," she said: "his study is
out o' doors and up on t'hill-tops." The house is a lovely spot now, but
it owes much to Wordsworth. I have a drawing of it, made soon after he
removed there, which represents only a very plain stone house, standing
on a natural terrace of turf. The interior has been often described, for
no visitor with a respectable claim on the poet's attention was ever
turned away. But it is now in the possession of a man who suffers no
one to approach it. In fact, he has taken care to post conspicuously
the following notice: "No person is allowed in these grounds under
any circumstances." In 1850, Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount,--a
sweetly-solemn death, which gave to his mourning heart the glad
assurance that he was "going to Dora," his dearly beloved daughter,
whose death on the threshold of a beautiful and happy womanhood he had
never ceased to mourn.
On the road which skirts Rydal Water is Nab Cottage, forever associated
with De Quincey and poor Hartley Coleridge. Standing before it, how easy
it was to imagine the small, fragile Opium-Eater, with his wrinkled face
and arched brows loaded with thought, and those haunted eyes peering out
from their dark rings! How vividly we could see him in the small parlor,
with its five thousand books and bright fire and decanter of laudanum,
or imagine him rambling through the summer nights upon the hills, in
solitary possession of the whole sleeping country, when that fine
expression he applied to Coleridge in similar situations might so well
designate himself,--"an insulated son of revery"!
[The travellers next set out for a tramp to the top of
Helvellyn, the loftiest mountain of the lake district. On their
way thither they came upon an interesting pastoral scene.]
The farm-yard went straight up the hill, but was surrounded by buildings
of every kind. What a busy, merry, picturesque gathering was in it! The
old men, in clean, white shirt-sleeves, with long clay pipes in their
mouths, were wandering about the yard, watching the shearers, who were
working with a silent rapidity that showed a very keen contest. For
these "shearings" are a kind of rural Olympics; and proud is the young
farmer who has finished his sixscore sheep in a day.
There were seven shearers present, wonderfully handsome, stalwart
fellows. Each sat upon a bench, their pillar-like throats uncovered,
their arms bare to the shoulder; and, as the sheep were brought to them,
they lifted them on to the bench, turned them with the greatest ease,
and cut off the wool with amazing rapidity, rarely allowing the shears
to injure the animal. If such an accident occurred, it was a blemish on
the shearer's fame.
At a long impromptu table women were just as rapidly folding the fleeces
ready for market. Some were handsome matrons, some were young lasses,
but all wore the snow-white kirtle and the short, striped linsey
petticoat that showed their slender ankles and trimly-shod feet. Peals
of merry laughter and shafts of harmless satire flew from them to the
shearers, who were far too busy to answer just then, but who doubtless
promised themselves future opportunities. In a small enclosure at the
extreme end there was perhaps the merriest group of all,--about a dozen
school-lads, whose duty it was to bring the sheep to the shearers. How
the heated air quivered above the panting creatures, and how the lads
laughed and shouted and tugged and pulled and pushed and dragged, their
brown faces glowing to crimson, their parted scarlet lips and intense
blue eyes making them perfect pictures of splendidly healthy, happy
boyhood!
And with what indulgent tolerance the sheep-dogs watched them! I am
sure the good-natured ones laughed quietly to themselves at all the
unnecessary fuss, while others lay with their heads between their paws
and opened their eyes sarcastically at the whole affair. They would have
taken a sheep by the ear and walked it up to the bench without a bark.
It was a perfect idyllic picture, in which every age of manhood and
womanhood blended.
At sundown over six hundred sheep had been sheared, and a number of
visitors arrived. Then a feast was spread for more than fifty people,
and after it the fiddlers took the place of honor, and dancing began. No
one could resist the mirthful infection, and, after a slight hesitation,
Christina drew on her gloves and allowed herself to be persuaded to open
the ball with "the master." She was just stepping daintily down the
middle, with a smile on her face, when the Bailie looked in at the open
door. He professed to be "vera weary;" but in half an hour he was
taking his part in "Moneymusk" with a lively agility that won him much
admiration. "Such hours dinna come every day," he said. And so we stayed
until the dancing ceased and the company scattered at the fell foot into
parties of twos and threes.
[From Grasmere they made their way to Keswick, the capital town
of the lake district, and the home of Southey and Coleridge.]
When Southey came to Greta Hall, in 1803, Coleridge, the "noticeable man
with large gray eyes," was living there, delighting the reading world
with his vast and luminous intellect and his Miltonic conceptions,
reaching "the caverns measureless to man." Here that marvellous boy
Hartley ran about, and so charmed Coleridge's landlord that he could
scarcely be persuaded to take the rent for Greta Hall, considering the
joy of the child's company a full equivalent. For three years Coleridge
and Southey occupied the Hall together; then Coleridge became the slave
of that opium-habit which made his comings and goings more uncertain
than a comet's. He flitted about between Southey and Wordsworth; and
never since Shakespeare's time have three men of equal genius lived on
such terms. Landor called them "three towers of one castle." Very soon
De Quincey made a fourth in this remarkable group. And two of them were
wise, and two of them were stranded on the same poppy-covered coast, the
land of the Lotos-Eaters.
We wandered about Keswick, but wherever we went the shades of these
great men followed us, and half a mile out of it, on the Penrith road,
we were suddenly met by another wraith of genius, for there stood the
pretty cottage to which Shelley brought his first wife, the lovely woman
of humble birth whom he offended society by marrying. Here they were
visited by the Southeys and De Quincey, and the latter in his "Sketches"
has a very charming picture of the girl-wife playing gravity before her
visitors and running about the garden with Percy when they were tired
of the house. Shelley was then nineteen and Southey thirty-seven; and
Southey says, "Shelley acts upon me as my own ghost might do; he has all
my old dreams and enthusiasms: the only difference is the difference of
age."
Many bitter things were said of the handsome, gifted Shelley in his day;
but, as Dr. Arnold in his quaint, Luther-like phraseology observes,
"Doubtless it is good for a man to have to do with Mr. Posterity," for
that impartial judge has done Shelley justice. We bought his "Alastor"
as we went back to the hotel, and in the evening twilight read it,
remembering the while that it was written "in the contemplation of
death, which he felt to be certain and near."...
The next day we went around Derwentwater in a boat,--certainly the best
way to see it, for the bays and islands and points of interest on this
lovely sheet of water can thus be leisurely visited. Soon after leaving
Keswick, Skiddaw appears to rise from within a stone's cast of the
shore, and continues a magnificent object during most of the way. At
the head of the lake the mountains rise, height above height, from the
Lodore crags to the lofty summits of Scawfell Pike and Scawfell, the
latter the highest mountain in England. Southey had told us how "the
water comes down at Lodore," but we wished to see it for ourselves: so
we landed at the long wooden pier belonging to the Lodore Hotel, and,
guided by the tremendous roar, scrambled a short distance among the
crags and boulders, and saw the wild waters
"Retreating and beating, and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying, and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing, and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming, and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing, and brushing and gushing,
And curling and whirling, and purling and twirling,
And flapping and rapping, and clapping and slapping,
And dashing and flashing, and splashing and crashing,
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending,
All at once and all over, with mighty uproar,
And this way the water comes down at Lodore."
THE ROMAN WALL OF CUMBERLAND.
ROSE G. KINGSLEY.
[On the borders of Cumberland, at the northern boundary of
Roman occupation of England, a wall of defence against the
barbarians of Scotland was built, and manned by sturdy legions.
This wall still exists, and its present condition is described
below.]
Half an hour's drive brought us to the farm-house at Birdoswald, and
here the real interest of our expedition began. We were now on the Roman
Wall; and, except Borcovicus or Housteads, near the Northumberland
lakes, Birdoswald is the most perfect station along its line. It is
supposed to be the Roman Ambloganna, which was garrisoned by a strong
force of Dacians from Wallachia and Moldavia. The camp is five and
a half acres in extent. The eastern gate-way is in very perfect
preservation, the large blocks on each side of the double portal being
in their original position and still containing the pivot-holes. The
arch above the gate-way is gone; but some of the stones which formed it
lie strewn about. Close to the gate are the ruins of a guard-house, and
a portion of the boundary-wall, six feet in breadth. The western and
southern gate-ways and walls are all well preserved, the walls having
five or six courses of facing-stones, and being seven to eight feet
thick.
In the farm-house the buxom farmer's wife showed us an ancient arch in
the wall of the passage, under which lay a collection of curiosities
found from time to time about the camp,--a beautiful stone figure with
flowing drapery, small stone altars, such as the soldiers used in their
private devotions, and so forth. Outside, pinks, lilies, and roses were
filling the air with their perfume, as we made our way through the
little garden to the green field where stood the camp. We wandered about
round the low stone walls, through the gate-way, where we saw the actual
marks of the chariot-wheels on the pavement,--two ruts in the stone. We
looked into the remains of the guard-house, where the sweet thyme and
delicate clover now creep over stones against which Dacian warriors
rested their heavy heads. We tried to trace out the course of streets,
temples, and barracks among the grass-grown heaps in front of the
farm-garden; and then I went out to the brow of the hill to see what was
there.
What a surprise! The green field fell away abruptly in a great cliff,
and down below the Irthing foamed over its stony bed, twisting and
winding in sinuous curves of silver along the narrow valley, among
wooded slopes and rocky crags. Green ridge and brown fell in endless
succession led the eye away into the far distance, where Skiddaw loomed
up in the south.
The late Lord Carlisle, in his "Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters,"
compares this view to the first sight of Troy after crossing the tame
low plain of the Troad. It was certainly a grand point of vantage which,
with their usual wisdom, the Romans pitched upon. The one thing one does
not see at first is, where they got their water; and this was always one
of the first points they considered in choosing a site. The river is too
far off, and no spring now appears inside the camp. Last year my friends
showed Birdoswald to the learned head-master of one of our most famous
public schools. The absence of water puzzled the wise man not a little,
and he asked one of the farm maidens who was showing the party round if
she knew where the spring had been. She professed entire ignorance; but
another lassie standing by reminded her in broad Cumbrian, "It's where
t' goose laid her eggs last soummer." We soon found it out to our cost,
as, thanks to the rainy season, the ancient Roman well had formed a
little quagmire hidden in long grass, into which we plunged unwittingly
and came out with wet boots.
The Roman Wall adapts itself to the northern rampart of the camp, or
fort, and runs close to the road for some five hundred yards westward
from the farm-house. This wall--seventy-five miles long--has been the
subject of many antiquarian discussions, with which we need not meddle.
Those, however, who have gone most thoroughly into the subject now agree
that it was erected by the renowned emperor Hadrian, when he came to
Britain, in the year 119. The inscribed slabs and altars found at the
stations and castles on the line of the wall are undoubtedly of his
reign; so are most of the coins that are found with them; and from this
fact it appears that the Roman legions received their pay at the wall in
his reign.
The conception of this stupendous barrier is singularly simple and
effective. The wall, though varying a little in width, according to the
nature of the ground it traversed, was about eight feet broad and
fourteen feet high. The north side was further crowned by a parapet of
four feet, making the total height eighteen feet. The outside stones
were regularly-shaped and well-dressed freestone, fifteen to twenty
inches long, ten inches broad, and eight inches thick. So well were they
cut that one can detect them in an instant in any cottage-wall, from
their smooth, finely-chiselled face as compared with the coarser
dressing of modern stones. Most of them have a wedge shape, tapering
towards the end which is set into the wall. Dr. Bruce thinks that stones
of this shape would have been conveniently carried on the backs of "the
poor enslaved Britons." The present dwellers along the wall say that
they were all brought in an old woman's apron and the wall built in one
night. Mr. Jenkinson, on the contrary, in his charming and learned
guide-book to Carlisle and the Roman Wall, thinks "both these modes of
conveyance are too romantic for the practical Romans, who were not
unacquainted with horses and carts."
The inside part of the wall consists of rubble-stone, like that found in
the massive walls of Caesar's Tower at Kenilworth and many other old
castles. The stones, evidently picked up on the spot, while the dressed
stone for the wall was brought in many instances from a great distance,
were cemented together as hard as a rock by pouring fresh lime mixed
with sand and gravel upon them.
Every four miles along the wall there was a fortified camp or station,
like that at Birdoswald, each capable of containing from six hundred to
one thousand foot- or horse-soldiers, as the case might be. "They were
generally," says Mr. Jenkinson, "close to the wall, on the southern
side, and appear from the remains existing to have formed almost a
square, containing three to six acres, surrounded by high thick walls,
provided with four gate-ways, and laid out in streets, barracks,
temples, baths, etc., some of the buildings having massive and
occasionally beautifully-sculptured stones. Outside these stations are
heaps of grass-grown rubbish, from which it is inferred that there also
existed suburbs, where dwelt natives and camp-followers."
Between the stations were _castella_, or mile-castles, about a mile
apart. These were sixty feet square, built also on the south side, of
solid masonry, about the same height and thickness as the wall itself.
In each of these were stationed a company of some twenty men, who were
yet further distributed singly in stone turrets, or watch-towers, used
as sentry-boxes, of which there were four between each mile-castle,
about three hundred and fifty yards apart. The sentries, being
within call of each other, could thus keep up a complete system of
communication along the line, and, as soon as danger threatened, troops
could be concentrated at once on any spot from the stations or camps.
Unluckily, none of these turrets remain, though Hodgson says that he
saw one opened so lately as 1833, about three hundred yards west of
Birdoswald.
Along the northern face of the wall the Romans still further
strengthened it by making a ditch below, thirty-six feet wide and
fifteen feet deep. It was evidently a dry ditch, as it follows the line
of the wall up hill and down dale. In some places the solid rock has
been excavated to make it, and occasionally the earth dug from it has
been thrown up into a bank on its farther side, thus making a third line
of defence. To the south of the stone wall, at a distance perpetually
varying from a few yards to half a mile, runs the vallum, or earthwork,
consisting, where most perfect, of three ramparts and a fosse. The
origin and use of the _vallum_ has also been a moot point among
antiquaries. But now there seems little doubt that the vallum was the
ancient Roman road running inside the wall. Pavements have been found
upon it in various places. At Gilsland, exactly on the spot where the
vallum would have to cross the Poltross Burn, the abutment of a Roman
bridge has been lately discovered; and the highest authorities are now
agreed, from these and many other indications, that this dispute may at
last be laid to rest.
Climbing once more into our "heaven chariot," we bade farewell to
Birdoswald and its many memories and drove due west along the line of
the wall. For five hundred yards it ran close beside us on the left,
about seven feet high and seven feet broad,--the stones in some places
untouched since the day the Roman legions laid them one on another,
clear cut as when they came out of the quarry. The short turf had
clothed the top of the ancient barrier with a fragrant carpet, and in
crevices where the cement had weathered away, the honeysuckle found
root-hold; a tall purple foxglove reared its proud head as if it were
acting sentry to the Border, and the fresh green lady-fern brushed the
rugged stones lightly with waving plumes.