CONISTONE HALL.

The Old Man;
OR
RAVINGS AND RAMBLINGS ROUND
CONISTONE.

I MAY SPEAK OF THEE AS THE TRAVELLER DOTH OF

VENICE:

——VINEGIA, VINEGIA,

CHI NON TE VEDE, EI NON TE PREGIA.

—Love’s Labour’s Lost.

LONDON:
WHITTAKER AND CO. KENDAL: J. HUDSON.
1849.

Table of Contents

• [INDEX.]
• [Introduction]
• [CHAPTER I.]
• [CHAPTER II.]
• [CHAPTER III.]
• [CHAPTER IV.]
• [CHAPTER V.]
• [CHAPTER VI.]
• [CHAPTER VII.]
• [CHAPTER VIII.]
• [CHAPTER IX.]
• [CHAPTER X.]
• [CHAPTER XI.]
• [CHAPTER XII.]

INDEX.

ERRATA.

• At page 7, line 8, for “materials” read subjects.
• ” 9, line 6, insert a comma between “or” and “by.”
• ” 30, line 34, for “mountaineous” read mountainous.
• ” 40, line 6, for “Oustead” read onstead.
• ” 69, line 7, for “dishabille” read deshabille.
• ” 84, line 1, for “Hall” read How.
• ” 98, line 13, for “to” read from.
• ” 112, line 14, for “anoo” read anno.
• ” 115, line 3, for “a” read its.
• ” 146, line 2, for “puce” read grey.

It has long been a favourite notion with me that if, instead of general guides to, or descriptions of all the Lake country comprised in single volumes, of which we have a superabundance, we could have each distinct locality treated of fully and minutely in a work devoted exclusively to itself, and written by some one whose long residence in, and intimate knowledge of the district described would secure its accuracy, we should possess a series of Lake books much more comprehensive, more useful, and more amusing than any we can yet boast of. An idea slightly similar to this seems at one period to have germinated in Professor Wilson’s brain; but, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil, it bore no fruit. In a review of Green’s Guide, the Professor says,—“It is our serious intention to pitch our Tent, next summer, somewhere or other among these said Lakes. Each of our principal contributors will have a Lake assigned him, and the lesser ones a Tarn. Wastle shall have Windermere—Odoherty, Ullswater—Ourselves, Keswick—and Kempferhausen is perfectly welcome to Conistone. By a just distribution of our forces, the Lakes will find themselves looked at and described in a way they never experienced before.” As nearly thirty years have elapsed since this intention was promulgated, and we have still to deplore its non-fulfilment, I have taken the initiative with the Lake somewhat depreciatingly assigned to the German savan. It is devoutly to be wished that my modest example were followed with regard to the other great Lakes, by parties who know them as perfectly as I know Conistone. It may hardly be gainsaid that there are such about every one of our Lakes, able, were they willing, to do much more justice to their subjects than poor Conistone has obtained from me; and if they would only set about it, I might, at least, claim the credit of having opened the ball.

In the volume now offered to his favourable consideration, the reader will find a very sufficient guide to all that is worthy of notice in the neighbourhood it depicts. The accuracy of its descriptions will be apparent when he visits the scenes described. The few anecdotes, traits of character, and sketches, or rather, perhaps, scratches, of mountain life can be vouched for as correct, and native to the district. And the information it professes to offer upon topics of supposed interest, local or general, is, when no authority is specified, all deduced from personal observation. These little merits may, perhaps, serve, in some degree, as a set off against its short-comings as a literary composition, and those are now sufficiently manifest even to myself; but in extenuation, I may plead that they are such as may be attributed to inexperience in author-craft, or such as may be looked for in a performance mainly written by way of amusement in the uncertain and brief snatches of relaxation from duties and anxieties of a nature peculiarly unfavourable to the improvement of a faulty style of composition by study or practice. I may state, however, that these duties and cares arise chiefly from an occupation which, more than any other, affords facilities of observing the topographical peculiarities of a district of country, and of noting the characteristics, social and psychological, of its inhabitants of every class. On this latter department of my subject, I should have dilated more freely, had I not been restrained by two salutary considerations, the first being a wish to keep within compass, and avoid prolixity—the second, a desire to live in peace and goodwill with those amongst whom my lot in life is cast. It is not easy to tell the even down truth of a class, any more than of an individual, without exciting wrath.

By the way, it is remarkable that, notwithstanding all that has been scribbled anent the Lakes, we are yet without anything like a correct portraiture of the Dales-people. The narratives and traits of character in Mr Wordsworth’s works, though generally striking and beautiful, are, as regards the peasantry, mere emanations of poetic fancy, rather than true delineations of life and manners. The same may be said of Wilson. De Quincey’s papers on the population of the Lake district, are correct only so long as he confines himself to colonists of his own rank. When he comes lower, it is plain enough to those who know the Aborigines, that he has only been permitted to study that, the most interesting, class in their Sunday faces and best behaviour, and that his observation there is rarely more than skin-deep.

It was reserved for a lady to give us the best essay upon the peculiarities of our aboriginal character; but even Miss Martineau, with all her female penetration, and her more than female genius and talent for observation, is, in that part of her work, oddly astray in her illustrations and erroneous in her assertions. For instance, she avers that our women-folk are all mutes. On this it is only necessary to remark that some of their husbands, and that I, myself, not unfrequently, nor yet unfervently, wish that Miss Martineau’s averment had better foundation. Bating this defect, her work on the Lakes, taking it for all in all, is the best, and by far the cheapest, of all Lake books, and their name is Legion!

One word more. I have been accused of using irreverently a name which it is the fashion now for all to revere. I should be truly sorry, could I fancy I had afforded real grounds for such accusation. If the opinion of one so obscure as I could be of any importance, I might truly declare that I yield to none in my respect for Mr Wordsworth’s character—that few can estimate the poetic grandeur and fine moral feeling of his truly great poems more highly than I; and if I have hinted at what I consider defects in his genius and philosophy, as exhibited in his works, who shall censure me for expressing an honest opinion, even though the mode of expressing it be a trifle more flippant than the subject may seem to warrant? It were as reasonable to extinguish a small luminary for announcing a fancied discovery of spots upon the sun, as to demolish me for fancying that I discern a few specks upon the otherwise resplendent disc of the great light of our Lakes.

Entreating the gracious patience of the reader for having spun a plain unvarnished tale at such a length, and bespeaking his more gracious indulgence to the manifold faults in “my von leetle performance,” as Signor Blitz used to call his conjuring tricks, I beg to subscribe myself the reader's

Very humble servant,
A. C. G.

Yewdale Bridge, May 21st, 1849.

RAVINGS AND RAMBLINGS ROUND
CONISTONE.

CHAPTER I.

Geographical Position—Etymology—Attractions—A String of Authorities—The Lake—Its Attributes—Statistic—Piscatorial—Commercial—Fatal, and Scenic.

Conistone, anciently Conyngstone and Cunyngstone, is situated in that isolated portion of Lancashire which, divided from the mother county by Morecambe Bay, bears the general designation of Lonsdale North of the Sands, and in the extensive sub-division of Lonsdale North called High Furness, which, the map will tell you, lies between Windermere and the Duddon, and between the Brathay, in Little Langdale, and Low Furness.

Of its name, different derivations are given by different authorities. Some give it a British origin, viz., “ton a town, con at the head of, is a lake.” Others say it is from the Saxon “Konyg'ston,” thereby inferring it to have been, some time or other, a residence or appanage of royalty. Others, less profound and less ambitious, derive its name from the facilities for hiding in “times of trouble” afforded by the intricate and inaccessible character of its cliffs, crags, and boulders, and call it Cunning Stone. The first describes its position—the second may flatter the loyal vanity of its residents, and the third accords with its natural character, its ancient orthography, and the A BAKER’S DOZEN OF PANEGYRISTSlocal pronunciation of its name; therefore take which best suits your taste, and allow me to tell you something about it as we find it now.

The beauties of Conistone have never been adequately described, neither has it received even “the shadow of justice” from any writer since the days of Gray, the poet, old West, the antiquary, and Mrs Anne Radcliffe, of romance-spinning celebrity, all of whom wrote of the scenery of Conistone in terms of quaintly eloquent eulogium. Indeed, the once popular, and still admired, fabricatrix of “Mysteries,” places it pre-eminent over all its neighbours in its diversity of beauty; and, since her day, many have spoken or written in praise of one or more of the items which go to make up the sum of its unparalleled attractions.

A lady of high rank and wealth informed me that the salubrity of its atmosphere is such that, when in very precarious health, and advised by an eminent court physician to proceed to Madeira as her only chance of recovery, a few weeks’ residence at Conistone restored her to robust and permanent health.

Professor Wilson says, that when “you come in sight of the Lake of Conistone, the prospect is at once beautiful and sublime,” and “you will acknowledge that Conistone can almost bear a comparison with Windermere.” And even he admits elsewhere, that it surpasses Windermere in the quality of its char!—perhaps, to most people, the highest praise he can give it.

Another equally experienced, though not equally eminent gastronome, declares its black-faced mutton to be incomparably the best ever boiled.

Professor Sedgwick, in his “Geology of the Lake District,” names Conistone thrice for any other locality once.

Experienced and successful mining adventurers class it A1., on account of its underground wealth.

A BOLD DEDUCEMENT

Dr Charles Mackay says that Conistone Water is “the most placid of all the lakes.”

Thomas de Quincey, the English opium-eater, speaking of the view of Conistone from the road near Tarn Hows, says—“to which, for a coup de theatre, I know nothing equal.”

A talented artist of indisputable taste says, that no other vicinity affords such an abundance of subjects for fine pictures.

The rain-gauge states, that scarcely one-half of the rain falls here that falls at Keswick, (where, by the bye, Lord Byron makes a devil say it usually rains).

Last and best, Miss Martineau says, the traveller “has probably never beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm; of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest beauty.”

And I, being neither bard, antiquary, romancist, moral philosopher, gourmand, natural philosopher, miner, bookmaker, opium-eater, painter, moist weather meter, nor philanthropist in particular, but the least in the world of them all, “in the abstract”—keeping its scenery, atmosphere, geology, mineralogy, fish, flesh, and fine weather all at once in view, and lumping, as is fair, the opinions of all these great and undeniable authorities together,—hold it to be matchless, not only in the Lake district of England, but in the world, at least in any part of it that I have seen.

In executing my agreeable task of pointing out some of the more prominent of the beauties and attributes of Conistone, I shall suppose you, my reader (should I gain one) to be a diffident, well-disposed young gentleman, located at the Water Head Inn, and just coming down stairs after a capital night’s rest. It is no matter, for our present purpose, how you contrived to get there without seeing anything I am going to shew you, but there you LENGTH, &c., OF CONISTONE LAKE.are, “with shining morning face,” praying complacently, as you trip down stairs, that you may never find yourself in worse quarters. You may present my compliments to Mrs. Atkinson, and request her to let you have breakfast in the parlour with the projecting window. If you be very hungry, you had better not look out yet; but, should there be any delay in the appearance of your breakfast, a thing not very likely, you may amuse yourself with the visitor’s book until it comes in; but don’t scribble any nonsense in it, as has been done by some youths who have been permitted by their mammas to leave home prematurely.

Breakfast being brought in, whilst you are eating, I may as well say a word or two on the statistics of the lake whose head lies within a few yards of your feet, and whose ancient name was Thurston Water. It is about six and a half miles long, therefore ranks next after Windermere and Ullswater in point of size, or, to speak very exactly, in point of longitude, for I should suppose the area of Bassenthwaite Water to be larger than the area of this lake, it (Bassenthwaite), though only four miles long, carrying a better breadth with it than Conistone Water, whose greatest width does not exceed a mile, many parts not half a mile, the average lying, perhaps, between them. Its greatest depth is stated in the Guide Books to be twenty-seven fathoms, but a map or chart of the lake in my possession, which was made from actual survey, many years ago, by a talented native of the dale, gives the depth of forty fathoms at about two-thirds of the distance down the lake, and twenty or thirty yards from the western shore. This places the depth of Conistone Lake second only to that of Wastwater, which is stated by some to be forty-five fathoms, by others to be unfathomable. Conistone Lake contains, in addition to some mere rocks, two islands. The uppermost, called Knott’s Island, after its ISLANDS, FISH, AND MERCHANDISE.proprietor, or more frequently, Fir Island, from its handsome covering of Scotch firs, becomes peninsular in very droughty weather; and the lower, called Peel Island—why, I don’t know—or Montagu Island, after the Dukes of Montagu, formerly Lords of the Manor, and succeeded by the Dukes of Buccleugh, or by the Aborigines, the “Gridiron,” the best name of the three, inasmuch as it pretty accurately describes its shape, it having a handle or shank of rocks projected in lengthened chain from its south-western side, is covered by natural wood of no great altitude; and its rocky sides are so high and precipitous, as to render landing upon it a matter of difficulty, if not of danger, but, for all that, pic-nic parties sometimes resort to it. There was also a floating island about twenty yards square, finely covered with young birches of decent stature, which used to move about the lower end of the lake, but unfortunately it was stranded amongst the reeds near Nibthwaite by a strong north-east wind which prevailed for a day or two in October, 1846, when the lake was unusually swollen by heavy rains. I shall, perhaps, point it out to you by and bye.

As to the lake’s vulgarly useful qualities, it contains the best char in the world, and quantities of unsurpassable trout of delicious flavour, and often of large size—for instance, there was one cut up at your present quarters, some time since, which weighed fourteen pounds. Of its pike, I need only say that one of them roasted or baked “with a pudding in its belly,” is, on certain occasions, worth all the scenery in the neighbourhood. It is also rich in eels and perch, more particularly the latter. It serves as a commodious highway towards the port of exportation for two hundred and fifty tons of copper ore every month, as well as for nobody knows how much slate, flags, birch brooms, and small timber. Conjointly with the circumjacent mountains and valleys, and the SOMETHING “OLD KIT” SAYS.copper mines, it brings, during each laking season, a goodly haul of fish to your host’s net, in the form of tourists and visitors. There has been only one person drowned in it within the memory of man, and he was a stupid, drunken fellow, who walked into it over the slate quay. Of course, under these circumstances, the most harmless water in the world could do nothing else but drown him.

Of its ornamental characteristics you shall judge for yourself, as soon as you finish eating.

Well, having despatched a few cups of coffee and a fair proportion of a most satisfactory array of etceteras, (for be it remarked, en parenthese, that a breakfast furnished by Mrs Atkinson does not yield even to that at Grasmere described by Christopher North, in terms sufficiently graphic, “to create an appetite under the ribs of death,”) you may take a look from the window. Your first impulse is an expression of gratitude to me for advising you to make a hearty breakfast before looking forth, for assuredly, say you, this would, if seen before, have effectually withdrawn your attention from the creature comforts before you, albeit first-rate.

The eminent Scotchman already twice mentioned, who is a high-caste laking authority, although his judgment is somewhat warped by his attachment to his own Windermere, says, somewhere, that a man sitting where you do now, might fancy himself looking from the cabin window of a ship at anchor in a beautiful land-locked bay of some island in the South Sea. You don’t know how far that flight may be correct; but you think that the Pacific bays must, in beauty, fall somewhat short of the scene before you. And you are nearer right than the great Christopher, who is out of his latitude in the South Seas, else he had never drawn the pretty-sounding comparison. Though many of the bays in those seas are lovely enough, yet few, RHYME AND A REASON FOR IT.as I am told, can come within a day’s sail of Conistone Water, so far as ordinary impressions of the beautiful may bear me out; and the beauties of Conistone, as they are manifold, so are they manifest even to the lowest order of taste, or talent, or whatever the principle may be that enables a common-place man, like myself, to distinguish beauty when he looks at it, and as they are apparent to all, so must they be appreciable by every one, and—but I am waxing enthusiastic, and shall, if I go on, become intolerably nonsensical, for, with me, there is not even the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous; therefore, as I prefer being absurd in verse to being ridiculous in prose, till I cool down a little—

“I'll have a shy

At Po—e—try.”

Conistone, fair Conistone, how vain it were to roam

Abroad in search of beauty, with such scenes as thine at home,

For, nowhere,—seek the frigid north, or sultry southern clime,

Are mingled so the beautiful, the sweet and the sublime.

Thy placid lake is beautiful—its winding shores are sweet—

Thine Old Man Mountain is sublime, whose top the white clouds greet,

As brother greeteth brother, with a hearty, close embrace,

And round whose rugged rock-bound sides the sportive cloudlets race.

Though other lakes be passing fair,—though fair be “green Grasmere;”

Though Rydal boast its herony, and Rydal Mount be near;

Though Ullswater be gorgeous, and Bassenthwaite be broad;

Though lovely be the lake that holds Saint Herbert’s old abode;

Though Crummock slumber pleasantly, 'neath high Scale Force’s roar,

“And Butter”-mere “is beautiful, but that you knew before;”

Though Wastwater and Ennerdale look sternly dark, but clear;

Though Eden-like the islets be of regal Windermere;

Though each hath its own beauties, yet amongst them is not one

Can boast of beauty varied so as thine, sweet Conistone!

Thy rivulets are bright as is air bell or crystal bead,

And high, and wild, and lone the Tarns those rivulets that feed.

Thy sunny sky is cloudless oft, and healthful are thy gales;

And sweet, in their secludedness, thy tributary vales;

And pleasant are thy homesteads snug beneath thy mountains dark,

And stately stands thine ancient Hall within its coppiced park.

And lofty are thy crags from whence the wakeful raven stoops,

And wildly are thy fells arranged in strange fantastic groups,

Uprearing their majestic heads in grandeur, gloom, and pride,

And none may tell what treasures vast their rugged bosoms hide.

And such are some attractions which in Conistone we find;

But Conistone! dear Conistone!! thy best remains behind,

For never elsewhere have I found, though I have wander’d far,

A dinner like thy mutton-chops preceded by thy char!

EASTERN SHORE.

There, there! you seem to have had enough of that, and I, having let off my superabundant steam, may now get on in a sedate, business-like manner. The placid lake and its winding shores you are now staring at, and tastefully, as you perceive, are its winding shores decorated with timber disposed in rich variety of thriving young plantations, clump, grove, coppice, hedge-row, solitary tree, avenue, and shrubbery, gracefully interblended here, and separated by fields and wide pastures of glorious verdure there, the whole finished off on the east, which we shall dispose of first, by miles and miles of heath purpled moorland. Along the lake on its said eastern side, are the finely-sheltered grounds of Tent Lodge, Bank Ground, Conistone Bank, Brantwood, and Water Park. The lake appears to terminate at about five miles distance—in fact, a little below “the Gridiron,” or a mile and a half from the lake foot—the water thereabout making a gentle sweep to the east. The southward prospect is bounded by the high-lying moor of Gawthwaite, from whence the green and cultivated slopes of Lowick and Blawith appear to descend in easy gradation to the water edge. Bringing the eye back along the western shore, your attention is next arrested by the brightly verdant, WESTERN SHORE.cultivated and conical height of Stable Harvey, standing out in fine contrast against the dark brown Beacon hill in Blawith, which considerably overtops it, and forms, with its broken outline, a highly picturesque background to the landscape in that direction. The landward edge of Stable Harvey is hidden from where you are, by the lengthened heath-clad summit, and coppiced and furze-clad side of Torver common, which rises steep from the margin of the lake to a considerable height. As you follow up the margin of the lake, you next descry the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite, with its rookery, plantations, and numerous single trees, occupying a fine situation under the northern shoulder of Torver common, and presenting one of the most eligible sites for a gentleman's seat, with extensive grounds, in the north of England. Nearer still, you see a promontory covered with bright verdure, and tipped, or fringed, with low spreading wood, running out, as it seems from the Water Head, into the very middle of the lake. It is the Hall Point; the grounds lying between it and Hawthwaite, and extending from the water side to the tops of the heights more than a mile to the westward, form the ancient deer-park, which possesses such a luxuriant and widely-extended covering of natural timber, as might gladden the hearts of those who affect to hold that any utilitarian interference with nature tends grievously to degrade or destroy the romantic characteristics of lake scenery. The Hall itself is concealed by the upper arm of the bay, with the trees and neat, but singular and high, steep-roofed edifice upon it. The said building is a boat-house belonging to “The Thwaite,” a handsome residence upon the southern declivity of the richly-wooded eminence to your right, over which you may note “The Old Man,” anciently, and more correctly, “Alt Maen” (British),

“Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,”

and looks, from this window, something like part of the back and head of a huge elephant, with his trunk slightly extended and a wart on his forehead.

GROUNDS, FELLS, AND VILLAGE.

You had better now take a boat and row a mile or two down the lake, and row yourself, or, if you are lazy, at least sit with your face to the stern, and fresh beauties will open upon your enraptured gaze at every stroke of the oars.

Beyond, or above, the inn you are leaving, is the residence of Mr James Garth Marshall, one of the princely manufacturers of that name in Leeds; it is surrounded by—excepting in some particulars Rydal Hall—decidedly the finest demesne in the Lake district, so far as the most beautiful combination of all the elements of natural and artificial loveliness can establish its superiority; for nowhere else have I seen wood and water, hill and valley, green sward and purple heather, rugged crag and velvet slope, grey rock and bright blossoming shrubs brought under the eye at once, in such magnificent contrast. Over the western side of the grounds, you may note the picturesquely rugged and jagged summit of Raven Crag, at the head of Yewdale, and nearer to you, but still more to the west, the wild, precipitous and lofty Yewdale crags. Over them the long ridge of Henn Crag, and higher still the broad summit of Weatherlam; and, as you row farther down the lake, the lofty undulating range connecting those with the Old Man, which last you may now contemplate in all his hoary grandeur and rugged magnificence. And, having just shewn you one of the finest demesnes and grandest mountain groups in the Lake district, I now shew you the most romantically situated village, parts nestled at the foot of the steep craggy hills, and parts stuck here and there upon the face of the adjacent declivity, every separate detachment, whether consisting of one or many houses, having its own separate designation, “TIME’S CHANGES.”but forming altogether the village of Church Conistone, and containing, by the last census, twelve hundred people. Its scattered appearance suggests the idea of something having, at some former period, flown across the country with a bagful of houses, and losing a number here in irregular lots through a hole in the sack. And here, close by in the apex, or, to speak nautically, the bight of the bay, between a row of lofty sycamores and the wide-spread woods of the old park, stands Conistone Hall, the ancient seat of the once warlike family of le Fleming, but now a farm house—with a considerable portion removed, and the banquet hall, wherein, of old, knightly revellers befuddled their brains in honour of high born ladies, converted into a barn, and a mighty commodious barn it makes; but how very applicable would be a quotation from Hamlet here, were it not hackneyed. The hall's most striking features now are its massive ivy-clad chimneys, though it is well worthy a closer inspection, and I shall perhaps tell you more about it at our next confabulation.

CHAPTER II.

Daylight versus Moonlight—Possible Results of Moonlight Laking or Love-Making—Conistone Hall—“The Hall Clipping”—Vale of Yewdale—Yewdale Crags—Old Yew Tree—Raven Crag—Hunting Incident.

Some harmless individuals who desiderate the reputation of a taste for the romantic, and fancy that such reputation is to be attained by affecting to think differently from the ordinary race of observers, maintain that this lake and the circumjacent landscape, like the ruins of Melrose, as described (unseen, except by daylight) by Sir Walter Scott, are seen to most advantage by moonlight. I don't agree with them! The beauties around you are so numerous, so diversified, such perfect realities, and the deformities or defects in the scenery are so few and so minute, that no softening or shadowing is required to enhance a reasonable man’s enjoyment of the loveliness of Conistone. The more extensively, and the more distinctly its features are developed, the more must it be admired. As with some rare specimens of human nature, “the more you see of it, the better you like it.” Therefore, be it mine to gaze upon, to exhibit and to dilate upon the attractions of this “our own fair vale,” just when the “sun of the morning” has mopped up the mists of the night,—when mountains and mere, crags and cottages, woods and waterfalls, fields and fell-sides, are fairly lighted up, and fully brought into view in all their proud proportions, and in all their contrasted colours. And, moreover, as Conistone is best seen under

MONITION.

“One unclouded blaze of living light,”

so will any susceptible young gentleman like yourself best consult his well-being by forswearing all loitering by moonlight, whether for laking or love-making purposes. I myself, in those days “when hope was high and life was young,” grievously deteriorated my mental quiet, as well as my physical comfort, by indulging in these too natural propensities, as may be evidenced by the following rhymes which, under the retrospect of wounded feelings and aching bones, I felt constrained to indite, and now offer to you by way of caution against yielding to the promptings of an excitable imagination; and, first, what say you to this?

Matter of Moonshine.

Where the hazels droop o'er a lake-laved slope,

Sat a sweet little maid and I,

And a chastened light lay softly bright

On water, wood, and sky;

For the lovely moon, in the “lift aboon,”

Was 'shrined on her azure throne,

And bright and clear in the slumbering mere

Her mirrored semblance shone.

We were silent both, and the evening moth

Was the only life that stirred,

And the far, faint roll of the waterfall

The only sound we heard;

Till soft and slow did a murmur low

Come on through the quivering trees,

And the boughs of the brake and the reeds of the lake

Were bent by a passing breeze.

And still did we lean on our couch so green—

That sweet little maid and I—

And we marked its course as, with lessening force,

The breeze swept ruffling by.

Whilst the lake rippled o'er from shore to shore,

And shattered the moonbeams bright,

Till that mirror broad o'er its surface showed

One shivering sheet of light.

But it passed away, and the waters lay

Once more in their holy sleep,

With the orb so fair still glittering there

In their bosom dark and deep;

When that sweet little maid glanced up and said,

With her smile so fond and free,

“I can tell you how what we've witnessed now

May apply to you and me:

If yon radiant light that adorns the night,

Seem the light of my love for you,

And her form beneath your answering faith

So perfect, deep, and true;

If that breeze appear any transient care

That may ruffle your bosom’s rest,

Then they shew that my love will the brighter prove,

When peace forsakes your breast.”

Long years have fled since that sweet little maid

Thus sweetly said to me,

And as seasons change, will the fancies range

Of maidens young as she.

And from hopes of bliss, in a life like this,

Will dreamers all awake—

And all that was said by that sweet little maid,

Was as moonshine on the lake.

So much for mental quiet; the next, as the show people say, will be for physical comfort, viz.:—

'Twas eve, and over Walna Scar the sun had sought the west,

And shades of night were settling thick o'er Thurston’s glassy breast,

But yet I lingered on the lake as loath to leave a scene

So lovely as, ere day’s decline, fair Conistone had been.

When over Hawkshead’s heights arose a mild and mellow light,

Announcing, with its silver sheen, the coming Queen of Night;

And now I lingered on the lake her advent high to see,

When stealing through the breezeless night came sounds of melody.

And from the mantling mist emerged a slowly gliding boat,

Which seemed in that imperfect light upon the mist to float;

And now I lingered on the lake a wild, sad song to hear,

And deemed it all too sweet for sound of this terrestrial sphere.

That seraph song to silence sank, the boat swept slowly past,

But soon another strain was heard as sweet as was the last;

And still I lingered on the lake in strange entrancement held,

Whilst through the calm mist-laden air the plaintive cadence swelled.

The moon rose fair above the fell, and fast her radiance cleared

The gloom away, and by her light another boat appeared;

And now I lingered on the lake to watch that lonely pair

Of tiny barks, propelled by hands of maidens young and fair.

Then soon as ceased the second song, the first-seen boat drew nigh,

And promptly did the first-heard voice in harmony reply;

And still I lingered on the lake unseen from either boat,

While Brantwood’s echoes multiplied each bosom-thrilling note.

As boat crossed boat—song after song did their fair crews repeat

Across the cool and glancing mere, in alternation sweet;

And still I lingered on the lake, and prayed they might prolong

Till day their strife of melody, alternate song and song.

And when they ceased, all nature seemed involved in sudden shade,

The lake its placid brightness lost, the moonlight seemed to fade;

No more I lingered on the lake—I felt the charm was fled,

And feeling, too, I’d caught a cold, went sneezing home to bed.

FARTHER WEST.

When I commenced this tedious, but, in your case, requisite digression, you were seated in a boat upon the lake, and staring with all your might at the turret-like, ivy-clad chimneys of Conistone Hall; concerning which hall West, the precise and industrious Furnesian Antiquary, who published his great work in 1774, says therein—“Conistone Hall appears upon the bank of the lake; it was for many ages the seat of the Flemings, and though now abandoned and in ruins, it has the air of grandeur and magnificence.” And again, in his history of the family who possess it, he says—“Sir Richard le Fleming, in the reign of Henry III., married Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Adam de Urswick, by which marriage he acquired MORE OF “THE HALL.”the manor of Conistone, and other considerable possessions in Furness;” and—“Upon the acquisition of the manor of Conistone, the family returned to Furness, the first seat of the Flemings. The Castle of Caernarvon was abandoned, then erased, and Conistone Hall was the family seat for seven generations. After the union of Lancaster with Le Fleming (temp. Hen. 4th), Rydal and Conistone vied with each other for seven generations more to fix the family in Westmorland or Lancashire. Sir Daniel le Fleming came and gave it against the latter; since that event (about 1650-60), the Hall of Conistone, pleasantly situated upon the banks of the lake of that name, has been deserted.”

If the Hall were in ruins seventy-four years ago, you may perceive that, though sufficiently venerable and time-shaken, there is nothing exactly like ruins about it now; but, as I said before, a great part of it has been removed, as is shewn by certain jambs and chimney-pieces which remain in the outer surface of what is now the outer wall, and have formed the fire-places of an extensive range of apartments which formerly occupied the space along the northern side of the present edifice. What remains of the Old Hall, I have also said, is converted into a farm-house and appurtenances, both of which are of a most commodious and substantial description; and, should your sojourn at Conistone happen to fall in the early part of July, let me exhort you to attend the Conistone Hall clipping, or sheep-shearing, where you will witness some “scenes of life and shades of character” not to be seen every day, nor in every locality; and, moreover, you will find the viands to accord in character with the building,—i. e. to be plentiful, substantial, and old-fashioned.

I say that the scene, or rather the series of scenes, presented by a sheep-shearing in the lake country, are of a description not to be passed by in these artificial days, when “touches of nature,” which “make the whole world kin,” are rare as they are rich;—therefore, supposing you to be at Conistone in the proper season, I shall, with your approval, of which I have little doubt, and with Mr Irving’s hospitable permission, of which I have still less, introduce you to that of Conistone Hall.

SHEEP-SHEARING.

The sheep, which are of the black-faced breed, are all gathered in from the fells on the previous day, or early in the morning, and are penned up in lots in a large detached barn through which you pass, and, in a yard behind which you are startled by a scene of animated and noisy bustle wonderfully at variance with the surrounding quiet. In two rows along the inner side of the semicircular yard wall, are seated the clippers, numbering from 25 to 30, each astride upon a stool, busily plying his shears upon a sheep laid bound on the stool before him; and you cannot help being surprised at the rapidity with which the animals are divested of their superabundant coverings; that tall man there in the blue linen jacket is one of the most expert, and can take the fleece from a mountain sheep in three minutes. I am told his father, a respectable yeoman in an adjacent vale, was still more dexterous, and that, for a wager, he, in one day, clipped—a number which, as I am anxious to maintain my character for veracity, I shall not here state. The average rate of clipping is, of course, lower than what I have mentioned; but, allowing it to be so, this number of shears incessantly at work for seven or eight hours, may give some idea of the number of sheep denuded each year on this and similar farms.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ AND DINNER.

In attendance upon the clippers are a much greater number of men and lads supplying them with unclipped sheep and removing those operated upon to another part of the yard, where, beside a turf-fire and a kettle of melted tar an active youth is stationed ready to stamp them with their owner’s initial, with another near at hand ycleped “the doctor,” carrying in his hand a pot of ointment to anoint the wounds, which, in such a hurried operation, many of his ovine patients receive. Multitudes of boys are skipping about on every side, collecting the cords as they are removed from the limbs of the clipped sheep, and carrying them to be applied to the feet of their successors upon the clipping stools. In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the storing-house. One jolly-looking personage, with an aspect worthy of his office, is moving about and dispensing “clipping drink” to all and sundry. And “Woo' Geordie,” known elsewhere as “Mop George” (after his chief article of merchandise,) is poking about gathering up stray fragments of wool. These, with one or two groups of idle on-lookers waiting for, and wondering when it will be, dinner-time, and perhaps an artist sketching the various and ever-changing groups, constitute the dramatis personæ of the sheep-shearing, whilst nothing but work is going forward; but, now the last sheep shorn, the last fleece rolled up, and “Woo’ Geordie,” liberally informed that he may convert to his own proper use and emolument all the fragments of wool that remain on the ground (no inconsiderable prize to him,) adjourn we to the Hall where a banquet waits our attack, which is perfectly worthy of Conistone Hall in its best days, for gigantic rounds of beef, and legs of veal, ditto of mutton, and quarters of lamb, with every tempting and appropriate accompaniment, are arranged upon a table which accommodates thirty hungry people at once, and the first detachment, having stuffed to repletion with the above enumerated solids, topped off with sweets, “quæ nunc perscribere FUDDLING AND FUN.(or describere either) longum est,” are succeeded by a second troop equally sharp set, and those who were idlers before, are by no means the least industrious now. “Another and another (set) yet succeeds,” until the whole party, amounting to something above six score, are fed and satisfied. You may observe that the whole company does not partake of its generally pastoral and agricultural character, for the duties of one end of the table are probably discharged, to all the successive troops of eaters, by a practitioner of the law, and those of the other by a ditto of medicine, both of whom are glad to relieve, by a few hours’ mirth, untutored though it be, their daily routine of attention to the multifarious derangements to which the business and the bodies of “God’s humanity” are liable.

Dinner being at last fairly finished, “now comes the sweetest morsel of the night,” and strong ale and tobacco, as their legitimate successors, supersede beef and pudding, and all the guests being settled down in the capacious Hall, as many as can, round the long table, others on forms or benches arranged in rows, and others, more favoured, apart from the crowd, around a small table placed under a chimney large enough to be a dwelling-house for a family of moderate pretensions; pipes are filled and lighted, glasses are filled and tasted, and singing is commenced by John Kendal giving, in characteristic and peculiarly comic style, a quaint old ballad of the “down, derry down” genus, concerning a parson who “had a remarkable foible of loving good liquor much more than the Bible,” and of whom it was said “he was much less perplext in handling a tankard than handling a text,” and, once set a going, a stream of songs interspersed with “quips and cranks,” and no! not “wreathed smiles,” but wide grins and roars of laughter, with noisy joke and noisier repartee, carries rapidly away the remaining hours of the evening. The majority of the songs are CLOSE OF THE CLIPPING.of a stamp now to be met with only amongst the mountains, or in such other districts where primitive pastoral habits yet prevail, and are to be appreciated and enjoyed only by those who hold broad humour and natural spirit and freedom to be a sufficient compensation for rudeness of phraseology, and the absence of polish, refinement, and high sentiment; and you may notice, that, as might be expected, their subjects and sentiments become less and less refined, and their humour less and less restrained, in due proportion with the sinking of the potent clipping drink in the tilted barrels, till at length the very orderly part of the company think it time to depart.

I may be censured for introducing you to scenes like these, and the only excuse I have to offer is that I wish to give you a correct idea of life and manners amongst the primitive inhabitants of these our dales, and it is only by mixing freely amongst the people upon such occasions, that any true knowledge of their habits and customs is to be gained.

I was lately deluded into reading a book entitled, “Conistone Hall, or the Jacobites,” written by a dignitary of the English Church, “in order,” as he says, “to exhibit the tone of feeling and the disorders of Church and State, to which the ill-advised revolution of 1688 gave rise.” I was simple enough to hope to find matter of local interest in a book called “Conistone Hall,” but was grievously disappointed,—it might as well have been called “Lancaster Castle,”—and the subject-matter is quite worthy of the author’s object.

And now, having bored you, probably ad nauseam, about the Old Hall, it were well to return to your Inn; and, having allowed you what is requisite of rest and refreshment, I shall carry you off upon your longest excursion first; “and,” to quote The Professor thereanent, “if murmuring streams and dashing torrents, and silent pools, and shadow-haunted grass-fields, and star-studded meadows, and glimmering groves, and cliff-girdling coppice woods, and a hundred charcoal shellings, huts and cottages, and one Old Hall, and several hall-like barns, and a solitary chapel among its green graves, and glades, and dells, and glens without number, knolls, eminences, hillocks, hills, and mountains,—if these, and many other such sights as these, all so disposed that beauty breathes, whispers, moves, or hangs motionless over all, have power to charm your spirit,——away with the cavalcade into the heart of the expecting mountains.”

HORSE AND AWAY.

If, like myself, you prefer enjoying a long excursion upon four legs to enduring it upon two, your host can supply, at a satisfactory rate, ponies well accustomed to the roughest roads in the country. You declare for the equestrian mode of progression: well, say the word, and behold your steed at the door. Being safely and pleasantly mounted, you turn your pony’s tail to the lake, and canter up the road till you come to a group of ancient and picturesque cottages and farm-buildings, called High Waterhead (Conistone Water being bicipital), and then take the road to your left, which passes through amongst these houses, and by another old homestead called 'Boon (vulgo above) Crag, holding on along an occupation road which winds through a considerable portion of Mr Marshall's wooded parks; and, as you jog along, keep a sharp eye to the left,—“ride, as the Spaniard hath it, with your beard on your shoulder,”—and your vigilance will be rewarded with occasional glimpses of the lake and its shores, broken up into a series of lovely fragmentary pictures by the irregular intervention of the scattered or “clumped” timber. You soon begin to descend into the middle of the vale of Yewdale, which Mr Parkinson, the accomplished canon of Manchester and Principal of St. Bees, maintains to be the most beautiful in the lake district, and which is described by Green, the artist, as being “a grand valley lying at the feet of the high mountains on the north of Conistone Water.” As you approach it, you must, if you have eyes and soul, be struck with “the steep, frowning glories” of the mile-long range of lofty cliffs which bound Yewdale on the whole extent of its western side, the otherwise barren aspect of which is finely relieved by thick groves, comprising oak, larch, birch, holly, &c., stretching along the foot of the crags, and also by numerous and various trees flourishing here and there along the face of the steep, in situations “the most inaccessible by shepherds trod,” even up to the highest verge of the precipice, where it makes one giddy to imagine how they have been planted, for they ore not of spontaneous growth, but were all planted by the late Mr Knott.

REMARKABLE IN YEWDALE.

You cross the pellucid Beck of Yewdale by a ricketty wooden bridge, pass through the farm-yard of Low Yewdale, and immediately after gain the high road, which runs along the west side of the valley close under the crags. As you near the head of the vale, be pleased to observe, as you will doubtless be pleased in observing, the sweetly situated farm of High Yewdale, with its long rows of unmercifully clipt yews, looking like magnified chessmen, one of which was recently recommended to my notice by an observant fair friend, as presenting a ludicrous resemblance to a starched puritan of the time of the Commonwealth, attired in round beaver and “cloak of formal cut.” You must here diverge a little from your line of ramble to examine the aged tree which gives its name to the vale, and which some unscrupulous local chronologists stoutly maintain to have been coeval with the deluge. Without feeling myself called upon to establish that fact, I may safely enough assert that it must be of vast antiquity, and it is the largest yew that I have yet fallen in with, those immortalized by Wordsworth as “the pride of Lorton vale,” and the “fraternal four of Borrowdale,” not excepted. I, and two friends, girthed it one summer with three riding-whips knotted together, and found it, at five feet from the ground, to measure 29 feet in circumference. You see that it has an aperture in the northern side of its huge trunk, which, like Mercutio's wound, though “not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, 'twill serve” to let you go in and creep round between that centre pillar formed of the most internal layers of its wood and the surrounding wall formed of its external layers and bark, a large portion of the intermediate timber having, like the halls of Lord Byron’s fathers, “gone to decay.”

FUTILE FOX-CRAFT.

This wondrous feat being duly accomplished, for your future exaltation, retrace your steps as far as the Shepherds' Bridge, and then, holding to the right, you soon pass through a gate, and come out upon a somewhat stony road winding along between the beck and the foot of Raven Crag, which rises on your right, steep and rugged, to form its multi-peaked crown. That precipitous peak (or pike) immediately above you, was the scene of an event remarkable in the annals of mountain fox-hunting. A poor fox, after an unusually long chase, reached the summit of Raven Crag, closely pursued by only three hounds, the rest of the pack being distanced long before; as a last chance for life, he made directly for the edge of that precipice, purposing, doubtless, to swerve when close to the verge, and thus rid himself of his pursuers by throwing them over: this sagacious expedient was, however, unsuccessful, for, when he reached the edge, his three foes were too near to admit of his effecting the saving turn, and all four were projected from the brow of the cliff, and dashed, out of all semblance of caninity and vulpinity, on the stones not far above your present position.

CHAPTER III.

Weatherlam—Tilberthwaite—The Brathay—Wordsworth's Bridges—Hallgarth—Little Langdale, its Tarn, &c.—Whitewash, pro and con—The Busk and Fell-foot—“Joan’s Ale was New”—Ancient Tumulus—Ascent of Wrynose—The Shire Stones—Source of the Duddon—Wordsworth's Sonnets thereon—Author’s ditto ditto—Traditional Sayings about Old Woods—Their Extent Disputed.

As you wind round the heel of Raven Crag, you obtain a fine view of the Old Man’s stupendous brother, Weatherlam, rearing his massive summit over the circumjacent hills, like a giant amid ordinary mortals. You follow a narrow winding road through the verdant fields and copse-clad hillocks of Holme ground, and soon find yourself in the vale of Tilberthwaite; and “O,” you suspirate, as you roll your eyes around, “what a spot for a honeymoon—'the world forgetting, by the world forgot'—so lovely in its seclusion and so lonely in its loveliness.” The only unpleasant characteristic of Tilberthwaite is an odd, uncomfortable feeling of which, though absurd enough, you cannot entirely divest yourself—an idea of difficulty in getting out of it. It is so encompassed by steep hills and hanging woods, that you involuntarily compare yourself to a cockroach in the bottom of a porridge basin. The name of Tilberthwaite is said to be compounded of Tillbear and thwaite, and to signify an enclosure for the cultivation of bear (pronounced beer), an old name for barley. This word, like many more that are obsolete in England, is still used in Scotland; for instance, it occurs in Tam O'Shanter, where it is said that Cutty Sark—

“Shook baith muckle corn and bear,

And held the kintra side in fear.”

And again, an old song commences—

“There'll be nae shearing here the year,

For the craws hae eaten the bear the year.”

But the day advances, and you’d better advance along with it, for “you've many a mile to go” before you get back to your comfortable quarters at Conistone. Push on then, along the bye road through the fields, and you again reach the high road. You follow it through the farm-yard—take the gate to the right, and pursue a rough way meandering pleasantly for about a mile through an irregularly-wooded vale. The enormous heaps of loose blue stone on every side of you are from the slate quarries, of which I shall perhaps tell you more when I have more time.

RIVER AND BRIDGE.

The stream you now approach is a branch of the Brathay, which rises on Wrynose and other hills round the head of Little Langdale, down which valley it flows, forming a fine fall at Colwith and at Skelwith, after joining the Great Langdale branch in Elterwater, and become a principal feeder of the “Regal Windermere;” you stand upon the verge of Lancashire, for this brook here divides it from Westmorland. Don’t cross it as yet, but follow its course upwards on the Lancashire side, and you will soon fall in with a primitive stone bridge—one of the very few remaining of those whose rapid disappearance Mr Wordsworth deplores, whilst he expresses admiration of “the daring and graceful contempt of danger and accommodation with which so many of them are constructed, the rudeness of form of some, and their endless variety.” If neglect of danger and accommodation, and rudeness of form, be the distinguishing and essential attributes of the class, this, connecting Tilberthwaite with Little Langdale, and called Slater’s Bridge, ought certainly to be preserved as an exquisite and unique specimen of a style of bridge all but extinct; for the sturdy Dalesmen perversely prefer bridges that are safe and commodious, though they may sacrifice the picturesque and rudeness of form to obtain these vulgar requisites.

DOCTRINES OF MR. WORDSWORTH.

Pass by, not over, the bridge—a horse passing over it might remind one of the famous asinine performer on the tight-rope—and you come to the hamlet of Hallgarth, which has little to distinguish it from a thousand others, save the rather uncomfortable peculiarity of not being touched upon by the “blessed sun” for about three months in the year. As you leave it by a steep acclivity, you had better take a survey of Little Langdale which lies spread out at your feet. Rather farther than midway between you and the abruptly rising range of hill called Lingmoor, which divides this vale from its larger namesake, lies Langdale Tarn, which bears out the Poet Laureate's assertion, that “Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy ground.” The chief beauty of Little Langdale consists in the irregular hillocky nature of its ground and the sites of its dwellings, many of which nestle so cozily in little dells, behind rocky knolls, and beneath umbrageous trees, as to convey a notion of the most attractive snugness; but here I am heretic enough to dispute the infallibility of the Poet Laureate’s taste. He has declared war against whitewash in something like the following terms:—“The objections to white, as a colour, in large spots or masses in landscapes, especially in a mountainous country, are insurmountable”—and, quoting somebody who says “that white destroys the gradations A WORD FOR WHITE HOUSES.of distance,” he holds on thus—“Five or six white houses, scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, dot the surface, and divide it into triangles, or other mathematical figures, haunting the eye, and disturbing that repose which might otherwise be perfect.” By the bye, a fair lady, whose opinion, in most matters of taste, I hold in the deepest reverence, recently became a convert to this doctrine of Mr Wordsworth, because she noticed the effect just instanced, not when gazing upon a landscape, but when compiling patch work in which fragments of white intruded amongst the blues, yellows, greens, reds, and neutrals, woefully disturbed the harmony and repose of the cushion cover or quilt. Mr Wordsworth says also, in support of his anti-whitewashing theory, that “in nature, pure white is scarcely ever found but in small objects, such as flowers; or in those which are transitory, as the clouds, foam on rivers, and snow.” But I must remind those who take for gospel every word that Mr Wordsworth preaches, that the “White Cliffs of England,” the snows upon a thousand hills, and the foam of a thousand cataracts are neither minute nor transitory; and that large masses of white in nature, such as these, as well as white clouds, and the terrible white of a stormy sea upon a rocky coast are all calculated to excite sensations of the sublime and beautiful in any bosom, whether the possessor be very much of a man of feeling and imagination or the reverse. But coming back to cottages, with all due deference to the Poet Laureate’s argument, and with more to that of his fair and talented supporter, I do maintain that no objects can give such a gratifying air of life and cheerfulness to a valley surrounded, or not, by high mountains, or so strikingly enhance the bright green of herbage and foliage, or the more sombre, but warmer, tints of near or distant hills, as a liberal sprinkling over the landscape of pure white cottages, embosomed, as these are, each in its own OUT-DOORS AND IN-DOORS CONTRASTED.nest of sheltering trees; and I do wish that the farmers of Langdale, and all our other fell-dales, would expend a shilling or two annually on lime, and bestow upon their romantically situated homesteads, “the cleanly, pleasant appearance derivable from a plentiful periodical application of white-wash.” Their present grim, dingy, almost squalid exteriors, are strongly suggestive to the mind of a stranger of internal poverty, desolation and dirt, than which nothing can be more distant from their real in-door condition; for, in all these scattered houses, miserable as they look externally, there is abundance for the wants of the inmates and for the requirements of hospitality, and their cleanliness is such that, as I have partaken of many meals spread upon their unclothed tables, so, in the absence of a table, would I not scruple to eat my dinner if laid upon any of their blue flagged floors,[A] for those are cleaner than many table-cloths I have seen in the course of my peregrinations through other countries.

[A] It is said that “great wits jump together,” and it would appear that, under certain circumstances, the same saltatory exploit may be performed by a great and a small wit; for instance, Miss Martineau in her capital essay on the Lake District, treating of the inside cleanliness of the houses, makes nearly the same remark as I have made above. I am sorry that I cannot conscientiously adopt the complaint of the very modern literary gentleman who accused Shakspeare of forestalling all his best ideas, because the above passage, or at least the same idea, if it be one, occurred in the first edition of these papers, and was printed above three years before the appearance of Miss Martineau’s work.

WORT AND WELCOME.

Mais revenons a nos moutons,—return we to our ramble. As you move forward, here take a good look at Langdale Pikes, perhaps the most picturesque hills in England, and seen to advantage from this road, over Wallend and Blea Tarn. Which last again brings Mr Wordsworth upon the stage; indeed it is difficult to descant upon any part of the lake country without running foul of him, and this Blea Tarn is the scene of one of those purely poetical descriptions so truly and peculiarly his own, which prove by the earnestness, fervour, and simplicity of their style, that their author is a true poet, with all his whims; and they may well be received as an ample atonement for even more of the middling quality than he, during his long and peaceful life, has inflicted upon the reading world.

The newly-made cart-road to your left leads to Greenbourne—a wild and retired dell under the north-eastern shoulder of Weatherlam, where a spirited and meritorious mining adventure, set on foot by some working miners from Conistone, is in progress, and is likely to prosper. The farm under the fell on the other side of the valley, is called the Busk, and was formerly a public house, as was also Fell-foot, the uppermost house in the dale. It is said of these old hostels, that they would commence brewing when they saw their chief customers, the caravans of travellers, carriers, and pack horses (then the only mode of conveying goods, as this was the only road, between Kendal and Whitehaven), appear on the top of Wrynose, and that they would have good drink ready for them by the time they reached the bottom. This reminds one of the old story of the thirsty London traveller drawing up and calling for ale at an old public house, called the “Dog and Doublet” on Carleton Thwaite, and being told by the landlady in her brewing apron, that “they happened to be out of drink just then, but if he would light his ways down and stop a leyle bit, he should have wort and welcome while the yell was getting ready.” As you approach Fell-foot you cross the beck, and entering Westmorland, come upon the ancient pack-horse road; and passing close in front of Fell-foot, a favourable sample of the old-fashioned mountain farm-house, you commence the ascent of Wrynose. In the field immediately behind the farm buildings, is a large mound or tumulus which has never been noticed in any published work, but which, it is much to be desired, that some learned antiquary would examine, and report upon its nature and probable or possible origin. It is an oblong square, with a tabular summit from thirty to forty yards long, and from ten to fifteen broad—attained by a broad terraced road of very gradual ascent, which, after encompassing the mound twice or thrice, comes out upon its summit at its northern extremity.

WRYNOSE.

As you creep up the mountain, you may perceive in the deep verdant glen under your left, a number of small cone-shaped tumuli, whether formed by the hand of man or by the operations of nature this deponent sayeth not.

Having climbed for nearly a mile, please to halt and look back, and you have a view well worth all your toil, embracing Little Langdale, Colwith, Skelwith, Loughrigg, the bright waters of Windermere, and the groves and mountains beyond, altogether making up a picture approaching in beauty, though inferior in richness and variety, (as all other prospects are) to that seen from the Castlerigg, near Keswick.

And now, having nearly attained the summit of Wrynose Pass, I shall impart to you such instructions, as will enable you, without difficulty, to find the three shire stones, which here mark the spot where the three counties, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire meet; and this service I may mention is not rendered you by any of the hackney itineraries or guide-books, for I never could make them out until I received explicit directions in the matter from an old woman in Seathwaite. At what appears the top of Wrynose, when ascending it from Langdale, you come upon a short track of level ground, where the road runs along between a low wall of rock on CLASSIC GROUND.the right and a peat-moss on the left. Near to the point where the rocky wall runs down to nothing, and where the road makes a sweep to the left to rise an acclivity, look to the right, and, at a few yards distance from the road, and stuck in rather wet ground, you will descry three stones of the size of a high-crowned hat—about five feet distant from each other—and forming a triangle; each stone is in a different county, and if you are tolerably lish and lengthy of limb, you may place a foot upon one stone, the other foot on another, and your hands on the third; or should the circumstances under which you visit the spot require you to do the feat more gracefully or more decorously, you may place both feet on one and distribute your hands between the other two—either way you perform it, you may brag thereafter that you, in your individual person, have been in three counties at one and the same time.

You leave the spot where “three fair counties meet together,” and topping the aforesaid short ascent, soon begin to descend, and as you descend, do not attempt to shew your learning by quoting Virgil, and calling this “facilis descensus Averni,” for it is a most infacile and innerman-jumbling “descensus” into a very different place—a vale destined through future ages to hold a proud rank amongst the thousand be-rhymed and be-sonneted localities of ancient and modern poets, such as “The Plains of Troy, of which blind Homer sang,” “Parnassus' hill where wells fair Castaly,” “The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” “The soft flowing Avon,” “The wide and winding Rhine,” “The Banks o’ Doon,” “The Groves of Blarney,” &c., &c., &c.—for it is the subject of a rosary of sonnets by our great moral poet, of higher celebrity than any given to the world since the days of Petrarch, and I hope that neither Mr Wordsworth nor you will think that I exceed my commission by quoting here the two first of the series of “Sonnets on the River Duddon.”—

“SORDID INDUSTRY.”

I.

Not envying Latian shades—if yet they throw

A grateful coolness round that crystal spring,

Blandusia prattling as when long ago

The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing;

Careless of flowers that in perennial blow

Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling;

Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering

Through ice-built arches radiant as Heaven’s bow;

I seek the birth-place of a native stream.

All hail! ye mountains! hail thou morning light!

Better to breathe at large on this clear height

Than toil in needless sleep from dream to dream:

Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright,

For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme!

II.

Child of the clouds! remote from every taint

Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;

Thine are the honours of the lofty waste;

Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,

Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissue quaint

Thy cradle decks;—to chant thy birth, thou hast

No meaner Poet than the whistling blast,

And desolation is thy Patron-Saint!—

She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare

Those mighty forests, once the bison’s screen,

Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair

Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green;

Thousands of years before the silent air

Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!

The first two lines of the second of these sonnets furnish an instance of the prime defect in Wordsworth’s philosophy and poetry, namely, his affected (for it cannot be real), contempt for, and his perpetually recurring sneer at, what he here calls sordid industry. I say this contempt cannot be real, because Wordsworth, though a great Poet, possesses quite an average share of ordinary unpoetical prudence and discernment, and though in earnest, no doubt, in his worship of “unprofaned nature” holds in due appreciation those commonplace comforts of civilized life, which, without the aid of the sordid industry, would scarcely be attainable. Moreover, to meet him on his own ground, this wild locality is by no means very “remote from every taint of sordid industry”—these hills are devoted to sheep farming, and though I am far from stigmatizing stock farmers as being more sordid than other classes, yet is their ordinary employment as essentially sordid in its nature, and as coarse, unromantic and disagreeable in its details, as any other common mode of money-making, notwithstanding all that has been said, or sung, to the contrary.

SOURCE OF THE DUDDON.

A HUMBLE IMITATION VERY!

And now, in humble imitation of my betters, I cannot refrain from trying my poor hand at a sonnet, and, when you have well considered the same, I hope and believe that, however infinite you may reckon its poetical inferiority, you will admit that its sentiment is more in accordance with the subject—that it is conceived in a more Catholic spirit than those of my great prototype—

“And that my raptures are not conjured up

To serve occasions of poetic pomp,” attend;—

Here springs the Duddon, trickling from the end

Of Wrynose, thus suggesting the belief

That Wrynose lacks a pocket-handkerchief.

It argues much untidiness to send

A nose-bred rill meandering o'er the breast

Of Seathwaite vale; but, as you downward wend,

Where verdure, rocks, and water aptly blend

To form a scene whose presence few had guess'd,

Amid these wild brown fells, you'll bless the source

Of this clear stream whose gushing waters lend

A music cheering you as you descend,

With easy lounge along its fitful course,

And pray that, whilst these wild brown fells endure,

Wrynose’s catarrh ne'er may find a cure!

The head of this vale does not hold out much promise of beauty, and you feel surprised that any one, were he fifty times a poet, could contrive to make anything readable on such a subject as the dreary uninteresting valley before you. It is indeed a desolate spot, stretching its unrelieved length for two miles from the foot of this hill, with nothing for the eye to exercise itself, or the heart to console itself with, but bare fells, grey crags, screes and boulders, and a stone-vexed rivulet winding its lonely way along the bottom of the dale, but not a sign of life except what may be contained in moss and lichens, with here and there a little fern and grass.

“MIGHTY FORESTS.”

There are many who would persuade you that all these bleak hills and dales were formerly and for centuries covered with dense forests. Mr Wordsworth, in sonnet number two, speaks of “mighty forests” having existed hereabout for thousands of years before archery or hunting became fashionable, and Dan Birkett, of whom more anon, declares that formerly a con (vulgarly called a squirrel), could hop from branch to branch all the way from the top of Wrynose to Millom Castle; the same tradition, I may remark, exists in the same form in other localities; for instance, it is averred that the aforesaid little animal, could, in the olden time, accomplish a similar aerial journey from Wythburn to Keswick, and also from Loweswater to the sea at Moresby. But perhaps the best of the sort is the tradition cherished by the descendants of one of the old Border clans, which asserts that some time before “the good old days of Adam and Eve” a moss trooper might ride in the shade of trees from the head of Annandale to the Solway, about thirty-five miles, and all upon land belonging to the Hallidays.

Take my word for it, the extent, duration, and number of these old forests are very much exaggerated. Let us take these hill sides as an instance. Where are the vestiges of a thick wood existing here for ages? Burnt, you may say!—Yes, but where is the rich loam inevitably produced by copious deposit of decayed vegetable matter WHAT THE SOIL SAYS.on dry situations, or the deep peat-moss that always betokens the former existence of timber in wet localities? Here, to your left, you perceive there has been a small land-slip—examine the soil exposed, and what do you find? Why, about a single inch of the soil created by vegetable growth and decay, just as much as the poor little mosses can make and no more, and a substratum of the tenacious reddish gravel locally called sammel; but no where do we see anything approaching to the thick superstratum of rich vegetable mould always discovered on the sites of primeval forests. No! no! where you cannot find either loam or peat-moss, be assured there has been at no period, however remote, any considerable covering of wood.

CHAPTER IV.

Ulpha—Cockley Beck—The Sunken Graves—Dale-head—“The Stepping Stones”—Hinging House—The Clan Tyson—Anecdotes—T’ Birks Brig—Remarks on Scenery, and Quotations—Seathwaite Beck—Miss Martineau on the Church and Parsonage—Newfield—Entertainment for Man and Beast—Dan Birkett—Walla-barrow Crag—Stoneythwaite—Mr Wordsworth’s Anecdote—Character of Scenery.

As you pursue your rugged way down the vale, you at length come in sight of a group of buildings, which offers to you, as the gibbet did to the castaway mariner, the comforting assurance that you are still a sojourner in a civilised country—a matter on which you were beginning to feel uneasily dubious. It is the onstead of a large sheep farm, well known by the designation of Black Hall, which forms the most northerly portion of the Chapelry of Ulpha—a wild tract of country extending for many lonely miles along the Cumberland side of the Duddon, deriving its outlandish looking appellation from the same royal personage who is said to have accorded the honour of bearing his name, as part of theirs, to the town of Ulverstone and the Lake of Ullswater, the old Saxon Monarch Ulfo or Ulphus (some call him one and some the other), who, for anything that I know to the contrary, was one of the Kings of the Heptarchy. Probably, when I mention this, you will remember that Scott, in the Bridal of Triermain, tells of the Baron’s Page, when sent by his lord to enquire at the Sage of Lyulph’s Tower whether the fair apparition in his dream was “an airy thing” or of the earth earthy—

“He traced the Eamont’s winding way,

Till Ulfo’s lake beneath him lay.”

COCKLEY BRIG.

ETYMOLOGY AND ZOOLOGY.

Push on, and, as you round the elbow of the hill, you are farther cheered by the nearer prospect of another domicile on the Lancashire side of the brook; that is the residence of Mr Daniel Tyson, the worthy proprietor and occupant of Cockley Beck, the name of the house and farm being derived from the stream that rushes along its north-western boundary, and said to signify “a winding or rugged stream;” others say its name is derived from the former condition or character of the bridge here which used to be “Cocklety,” a term implying “a daring contempt of danger and accommodation” on the part of its architect; others, again, say that the name of the brook ought to be Cockling or Cackling Beck, because the noise it occasionally makes in its stoney bed may, by the aid of a leetle imagination, be likened to that by which a hen announces to all concerned that she has just got safely quit of an egg.

The vale of Seathwaite now assumes a more attractive aspect; your pleasantest road lies through the farm-yard of Cockley Beck, and that hearty-looking elderly man, the uniform cherry-colour of whose honest phiz bespeaks exposure to many a biting mountain blast, is Daniel Tyson himself. If you are disposed to rest and chat awhile, you may lead him, nothing loath, into conversation, and if you do so, I fancy that some of his communications will surprise, if they don’t interest you; for instance, in allusion to some skins you may notice hung up to dry, he will inform you that the weasels about Cockley Beck have a fashion, on the advent of winter, of CONJECTURES.changing their colour from brown to white, resuming their more sombre coloured coats on the return of spring; a fact in local zoology of which I incline to imagine you have not hitherto been cognisant. He will also tell you, should anything suggest the subject, that, in one of his pastures, a little up the beck, there existed, till within the last few years, a number of graves arranged in rows, but which now, either from the sinking of the soil, or the growth of the surrounding moss, &c., have become level with the adjacent surface, and all distinct traces of them obliterated. What rather adds to the interest excited by these mysterious tombs is, that there is no history, authentic, traditional, or legendary, to account for their existence—thus affording a capital field for those imaginative geniuses who love to speculate upon such mysteries or to frame what maybe awanting for their satisfactory development. With me the favourite probability in this instance is, that a skirmish, tolerably fatal, has been fought in this sequestered nook during the progress of some of the horrible wars that, from time to time, have saddened our merry land, and that the slain have been buried here where they fell; but, whether the supposed skirmish was fought between the factions of York and Lancaster about the time poor King Henry sought and found, for a season, a house of refuge in this vicinity; or between the Cavaliers and Roundheads, when the Flemings of Conistone stood out for Church and King; or between the Dalesmen themselves and a stray party of Moss-trooping Scots, who, “in the old riding times,” occasionally pushed their predatory incursions even into these poor valleys, neither Mr Tyson nor I will inform you, for, as I said before, history, authentic and apocryphal, is silent on the subject, Daniel is a man of verity, and I am but a lame hand at invention; therefore you need not hope for even a fabricated story (which, after all, would be better than none), in connection with this now effaced souvenir of the good old times.

THE STEPPING STONES.

A SUBJECT OF SONNETS.

But it is time you were taking leave of Cockley Beck, and as you are doing so, you may perceive at the foot of the heights to your left a number of rubbish heaps, the result of a mining speculation set a going and kept up by some spirited and very persevering gentlemen chiefly resident in Ulverstone. You now canter along a decent road through flat meadows where, if it be the season, the lads and lasses of the dale are busily engaged in securing the hay-crop and carrying it home, probably on horseback, for the old farmers here have not as yet begun to use carts for that purpose. On this road, too, there are “oceans of gates” to open, the frequent recurrence of which becomes rather troublesome, should your pony not be all the steadier. You very soon arrive at another farm, called Dalehead; but, by the bye, just before you reach that, you had better turn off to the right by a track that soon brings you to the river side, and take a look at the stepping stones by which the Duddon is crossed at this point. When you have looked at them, you seem to wonder what it may be that should entitle them to be noticed more than any other stepping stones in the country. I'll tell you. Mr Wordsworth says they are—

“What might seem a zone