Part 14
On our approaching the western shore, the range of rocks that form it, discovered their cliffs, and gradually assumed a consequence, which the breadth of the channel had denied them; and their darkness was well opposed by the bright verdure and variegated autumnal tints of the isles at their base. On the bank, under shelter of these rocks, a white house was seen beyond the tall boles of a most luxuriant grove of plane-trees, which threw their shadows over it, and on the margin of the silver lake spreading in front. From hence the road ascends the steep and craggy side of Furness-fell, on the brow of which we had a last view of Windermere, in its whole course; to the south, its tame but elegant landscapes gliding away into low and long perspective, and the lake gradually narrowing; to the north, its more impressive scenery; but the finest features of it were now concealed by a continuation of the rocks we were upon.
Windermere is distinguished from all the other lakes of this country by its superior length and breadth, by the gentle hills, cultivated and enclosed nearly to their summits, that generally bind its shores, by the gradual distance and fine disposition of the northern mountains, by the bold sweeps of its numerous bays, by the villas that speckle and rich plantations, that wind them, and by one large island, surrounded by many islets, which adds dignity to its bosom. On the other lakes the islands are prettinesses, that do not accord with the character of the scene; they break also the surface of the water where vast continuity is required; and the mind cannot endure to descend suddenly from the gigantic sublimity of nature to her fairy sports. Yet, on the whole, Windermere was to us the least impressive of all the lakes. Except to the north, where the retiring mountains are disposed with uncommon grandeur of outline and magnificence of colouring, its scenery is tame, having little of the wild and nothing of the astonishing energy that appears on the features of the more sequestered districts. The characters of the three great lakes may, perhaps, be thus distinguished:
Windermere: Diffusiveness, stately beauty, and, at the upper end, magnificence.
Ullswater: Severe grandeur and sublimity; all that may give ideas of vast power and astonishing majesty. The effect of Ullswater is, that, awful as its scenery appears, it awakens the mind to expectation still more awful, and, touching all the powers of imagination, inspires that "fine phrensy" descriptive of the poet's eye, which not only bodies forth unreal forms, but imparts to substantial objects a character higher than their own.
Derwentwater: Fantastic wildness and romantic beauty, but inferior to Ullswater in greatness, both of water and rocks; for, though it charms and elevates, it does not display such features and circumstances of the sublime, or call up such expectation of unimaged and uncertain wonder. A principal defect, if we may venture to call it so, of Derwentwater is, that the water is too small in proportion for the amphitheatre of the valley in which it lies, and therefore loses much of the dignity, that in other circumstances it would exhibit. The fault of Windermere is, perhaps, exactly the reverse; where the shores, not generally grand, are rendered tamer by the ample expanse of the lake. The proportions of Ullswater are more just, and, though its winding form gives it in some parts the air of a river, the abrupt and tremendous height of its rocks, the dark and crowding summits of the fells above, the manner in which they enclose it, together with the dignity of its breadth, empower it constantly to affect the mind with emotions of astonishment and lofty expectation.
FROM WINDERMERE TO HAWKSHEAD, THURSTON-LAKE AND ULVERSTON.
After ascending the laborious crags and precipices of Furness-fell, enlivened, however, by frequent views of the southern end of Windermere, the road immediately descends the opposite side of the mountain, which shuts out the beautiful scenery of the lake; but the prospect soon after opens to other mountains of Furness, in the distance, which revive the expectation of such sublimity as we had lately regretted, and to Esthwait-water in the valley below. This is a narrow, pleasant lake, about half a mile broad and two miles long, with gradual hills, green to their tops, rising round the margin; with plantations and pastures alternately spreading along the easy shores, and white farms scattered sparingly upon the slopes above. The water seems to glide through the quiet privacy of pleasure-grounds; so fine is the turf on its banks, so elegant its copses, and such an air of peace and retirement prevails over it. A neat white village lies at the feet of the hills near the head of the lake; beyond it is the gray town of Hawkshead, with its church and parsonage on an eminence commanding the whole valley. Steep hills rise over them, and, more distant, the tall heads of the Coniston-fells, dark and awful, with a confusion of other mountains.
Hawkshead, thus delightfully placed, is an antient, but small town, with a few good houses, and a neat town-house, lately built by subscriptions, of which the chief part was gratefully supplied by London merchants, who had been educated at the free school here; and this school itself is a memorial of gratitude, having been founded by Archbishop Sandys for the advantage of the town, which gave him birth. Near Hawkshead are the remains of the house, where the Abbot of Furness "kept residence by one or more monks, who performed divine service and other parochial duties in the neighbourhood." There is still a court-room over the gateway, "where the bailiff of Hawkshead held court, and distributed justices in the name of the abbot."
From the tremendous steeps of the long fell, which towers over Hawkshead, astonishing views open to the distant vales and mountains of Cumberland; overlooking all the grotesque summits in the neighbourhood of Grasmere, the fells of Borrowdale in the furthest distance, Langdale-pikes, and several small lakes, seen gleaming in the bosom of the mountains. Before us, rose the whole multitude of Coniston-fells; of immense height and threatening forms, their tops thinly darkened with thunder mists, and, on the left, Furness-fells sinking towards the bay, which Ulverston sands form for the sea.
As we advanced, Coniston-fells seemed to multiply, and became still more impressive, till, having reached at length the summit of the mountain, we looked down upon Thurston-lake immediately below, and saw them rising abruptly round its northern end in somewhat of the sublime attitudes and dark majesty of Ullswater. A range of lowers rocks, nearer to the eye, exhibited very peculiar and grotesque appearance, coloured scars and deep channels marking their purple sides, as if they had been rifted by an earthquake.
The road descends the flinty steeps towards the eastern bank of the lake, that spreads a surface of six miles in length and generally three quarters of a mile in breadth, not winding in its course, yet much indented with bays, and presenting nearly its whole extent at once to the eye. The grandest features are the fells, that crown its northern end, not distantly and gradually, like those of Windermere, nor varied like them with magnificent colouring, but rising in haughty abruptness, dark, rugged and stupendous, within a quarter of a mile of the margin, and shutting out all prospect of other mountain-summits. At their feet, pastures spread a bright green to the brim of the lake. Nearly in the centre of these fells, which open in a semicircle to receive the lake, a cataract descends, but its shining line is not of a breadth proportioned to the vastness of its perpendicular fall. The village of Coniston is sweetly seated under shelter of the rocks; and, at a distance beyond, on the edge of the water, the antient hall, or priory, shews its turret and ivyed ruins among old woods. The whole picture is reflected in the liquid mirror below. The gay, convivial chorus, or solemn vesper, that once swelled along the lake from these consecrated walls, and awakened, perhaps, the enthusiasm of the voyager, while evening stole upon the scene, is now contrasted by desolation and profound repose, and, as he glides by, he hears only the dashing of his oars, or the surge beating on the shore.
This lake appeared to us one of the most charming we had seen. From the sublime mountains, which bend round its head, the heights, on either side, decline towards the south into waving hills, that form its shores, and often stretch in long sweeping points into the water, generally covered with tufted wood, but sometimes with the tender verdure of pasturage. The tops of these woods were just embrowned with autumn, and contrasted well with other slopes, rough and heathy, that rose above, or fell beside them to the water's brink, and added force to the colouring, which the reddish tints of decaying fern, the purple bloom of heath, and the bright golden gleams of broom, spread over these elegant banks. Their hues, the graceful undulations of the marginal hills and bays, the richness of the woods, the solemnity of the northern fells and the deep repose, that pervades the scene, where only now and then a white cottage or a farm lurks among the trees, are circumstances, which render Thurston-lake one of the most interesting and, perhaps, the most beautiful of any in the country.
The road undulates over copsy hills, and dips into shallow vallies along the whole of the eastern bank, seldom greatly elevated above the water, or descending to a level with it, but frequently opening to extensive views of its beauties, and again shrouding itself in verdant gloom. The most impressive pictures were formed by the fells, that crowd over the upper end of the lake, and which, viewed from a low station, sometimes appeared nearly to enclose that part of it. The effect was then astonishingly grand, particularly about sun-set, when the clouds, drawing upwards, discovered the utmost summits of these fells, and a tint of dusky blue began to prevail over them, which gradually deepened into night. A line of lower rocks, that extend from these, are, independently of the atmosphere, of a dull purple, and their shaggy forms would appear gigantic in almost any other situation. Even here, they preserve a wild dignity, and their attitudes somewhat resemble those at the entrance of Borrowdale; but they are forgotten, when the eye is lifted to the solemn mountains immediately above. These are rich in slate quarries, and have some copper mines; but the latter were closed, during the civil wars of the last century, having been worked, as we are told in the descriptive language of the miners, from _the day to the evening end_, forty fathom, and to the _morning end_ seven score fathom; a figurative style of distinguishing the western and eastern directions of the mine. The lake, towards the lower end, narrows and is adorned by one small island; but here the hills of the eastern shore soar into fells, some barren, craggy and nearly perpendicular, others entirely covered with coppice-wood. Two of these, rising over the road, gave fine relief to each other, the one shewing only precipices of shelving rock, while its rival aspired with woods, that mantled from the base to the summit, consisting chiefly of oak, ash and holly. Not any lake, that we saw, is at present so much embellished with wood as Thurston. All the mountains of _High_ and the vallies of _Low Furness_ were, indeed, some centuries ago, covered with forests, part of which was called the Forest of Lancaster; and these were of such entangled luxuriance as to be nearly impenetrable in many tracts. Here, wolves, wild boars, and a remarkably large breed of deer, called Leghs, the heads of which have frequently been found buried at a considerable depth in the soil, abounded. So secure an asylum did these animals find in the woods of High Furness, that, even after the low lands were cleared and cultivated, shepherds were necessary to guard the flocks from the ravages of the wolves. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the upper forests also were nearly destroyed.
In winter, the shepherds used to feed their stocks with the young sprouts of ash and holly, a custom said to be still observed; the sheep coming at the call of the shepherd and assembling round the holly-tree to receive from his hand the young shoots cropped for them [2]. Whenever the woods are felled, which is too frequently done, to supply fuel for the neighbouring furnaces, the holly is still held sacred to the flocks of these mountains.
[2] West's "Antiquities of Furness."
Soon after passing the island, the road enters the village of Nibthwaite, rich only in situation; for the cottages are miserable. The people seemed to be as ignorant as poor; a young man knew not how far it was to Ulverston, or as he called it Ulson, though it was only five miles.
On the point of a promontory of the opposite shore, embosomed in ancient woods, the chimnies and pointed roof of a gray mansion look out most interestingly. The woods open partially to the north, and admit a view of the _Swiss_ scenery at the head of the lake, in its fine position. On the other sides, the oaks so embower the house and spread down the rocks, as scarcely to allow it a glimpse of the water bickering between the dark foliage below.
At Nibthwaite, the lake becomes narrow and gradually decreases, till it terminates at Lowick-bridge, where it glides away in the little river Crake, which descends to Ulverston sands. We stopped upon the bridge to take a last view of the scene; the distant fells were disappearing in twilight, but the gray lake gleamed at their base. From the steeps of a lofty mountain, that rose near us on the right, cattle were slowly descending for the night, winding among the crags, sometimes stopping to crop the heath, or broom, and then disappearing for a moment behind the darker verdure of yews, that grew in knots upon the cliffs.
It was night before we reached Ulverston. The wind sounded mournfully among the hills and we perceived our approach to the sea only by the faint roaring of the tide, till from a brow, whence the hills open on either hand with a grand sweep, we could just discern the gray surface of the sea-bay, at a distance below, and then, by lights that glimmered in the bottom, the town of Ulverston, lying not far from the shore and screened on the north by the heights, from which we were to descend.
Ulverston is a neat but ancient town, the capital and chief port of Furness. The road from it to the majestic ruin of Furness Abbey lies through Low Furness, and loses the general wildness and interest of the country, except where now and then the distant retrospect of the mountains breaks over the tame hills and regular enclosures, that border it.
About a mile and a half on this side of the Abbey, the road passes through Dalton, a very ancient little town, once the capital of Low Furness, and rendered so important by its neighbourhood to the Abbey, that Ulverston, the present capital, could not then support the weekly market, for which it had obtained a charter. Dalton, however, sunk with the suppression of its neighbouring patrons, and is now chiefly distinguished by the pleasantness of its situation, to which a church, built on a bold ascent, and the remains of a castle, advantageously placed for the command of the adjoining valley, still attach some degree of dignity. What now exists of the latter is one tower, in a chamber of which the Abbot of Furness held his secular Court; and the chamber was afterwards used as a gaol for debtors, till within these few years, when the dead ruin released the living one. The present church-yard and the scite of this castle are supposed to have been included within the limits of a _castellum_, built by Agricola, of the fosse of which there are still some faint vestiges.
Beneath the brow, on which the church and tower stand, a brook flows through a narrow valley, that winds about a mile and a half to the Abbey. In the way thither we passed the entrance of one of the very rich iron mines, with which the neighbourhood abounds; and the deep red tint of the soil, that overspreads almost the whole country between Ulverston and the monastery, sufficiently indicates the nature of the treasures beneath.
In a close glen, branching from this valley, shrouded by winding banks clumped with old groves of oak and chesnut, we found the magnificent remains of
FURNESS ABBEY.
The deep retirement of its situation, the venerable grandeur of its gothic arches and the luxuriant yet ancient trees, that shadow this forsaken spot, are circumstances of picturesque and, if the expression may be allowed, of sentimental beauty, which fill the mind with solemn yet delightful emotion. This glen is called the Vale of Nightshade, or, more literally from its ancient title Bekangs-gill, the "glen of deadly nightshade," that plant being abundantly found in the neighbourhood. Its romantic gloom and sequestered privacy particularly adapted it to the austerities of monastic life; and in the most retired part of it King Stephen, while Earl of Mortaign and Bulloign, founded, in the year 1127, the magnificent monastery of Furness, and endowed it with princely wealth and almost princely authority, in which it was second only to Fontain's-abbey in Yorkshire.
The windings of the glen conceal these venerable ruins, till they are closely approached, and the bye road, that conducted us, is margined with a few ancient oaks, which stretch their broad branches entirely across it, and are finely preparatory objects to the scene beyond. A sudden bend in this road brought us within view of the northern gate of the Abbey, a beautiful gothic arch, one side of which is luxuriantly festooned with nightshade. A thick grove of plane-trees, with some oak and beech, overshadow it on the right, and lead the eye onward to the ruins of the Abbey, seen through this dark arch in remote perspective, over rough but verdant ground. The principal features are the great northern window and part of the eastern choir, with glimpses of shattered arches and stately walls beyond, caught between the gaping casements. On the left, the bank of the glen is broken into knolls capped with oaks, which in some places spread downwards to a stream that winds round the ruin, and darken it with their rich foliage. Through this gate is the entrance to the immediate precincts of the Abbey, an area said to contain sixty-five acres, now called the Deer-park. It is enclosed by a stone wall, on which the remains of many small buildings and the faint vestiges of others, still appear; such as the porter's lodge, mills, granaries, ovens and kilns that once supplied the monastery, some of which, seen under the shade of the fine old trees, that on every side adorn the broken steeps of this glen, have a very interesting effect.
Just within the gate, a small manor house of modern date, with its stables and other offices, breaks discordantly upon the lonely grandeur of the scene. Except this, the character of the deserted ruin is scrupulously preserved in the surrounding area; no spade has dared to level the inequalities, which fallen fragments have occasioned in the ground, or shears to clip the wild fern and underwood, that overspread it; but every circumstance conspires to heighten the solitary grace of the principal object and to prolong the luxurious melancholy, which the view of it inspires. We made our way among the pathless fern and grass to the north end of the church, now, like every other part of the Abbey, entirely roofless, but shewing the lofty arch of the great window, where, instead of the painted glass that once enriched it, are now tufted plants and wreaths of nightshade. Below is the principal door of the church, bending into a deep round arch, which, retiring circle within circle, is rich and beautiful; the remains of a winding stair-case are visible within the wall on its left side. Near this northern end of the edifice are seen one side of the eastern choir, with its two slender gothic window frames, and on the west a remnant of the nave of the Abbey and some lofty arches, which once belonged to the belfry, now detached from the main building.
To the south, but concealed from this point of view, are the chapter-house, some years ago exhibiting a roof of beautiful gothic fretwork, and which was almost the only part of the Abbey thus ornamented, its architecture having been characterised by an air of grand simplicity rather than by the elegance and richness of decoration, which in an after date distinguished the gothic style in England. Over the chapter-house were once the library and scriptorium, and beyond it are still the remains of cloisters of the refectory, the locutorium, or conversation-room, and the calefactory. These, with the walls of some chapels, of the vestry, a hall, and of what is believed to have been a school-house, are all the features of this noble edifice that can easily be traced: winding stair-cases within the surprising thickness of the walls, and door-cases involved in darkness and mystery, the place abounds with.
The abbey, which was formerly of such magnitude as nearly to fill up the breadth of the glen, is built of a pale-red stone, dug from the neighbouring rocks, now changed by time and weather to a tint of dusky brown, which accords well with the hues of plants and shrubs that every where emboss the mouldering arches.
The finest view of the ruin is on the east side, where, beyond the vast, shattered frame that once contained a richly-painted window, is seen a perspective of the choir and of distant arches, remains of the nave of the abbey, closed by the woods. This perspective of the ruin is[3] said to be two hundred and eighty-seven feet in length; the choir part of it is in width only twenty-eight feet inside, but the nave is seventy: the walls, as they now stand, are fifty-four feet high and in thickness five. Southward from the choir extend the still beautiful, though broken, pillars and arcades of some chapels, now laid open to the day; the chapter-house, the cloisters, and beyond all, and detached from all, is the school-house, a large building, the only part of the monastery that still boasts a roof.
[3] "Antiquities of Furness."
As, soothed by the venerable shades and the view of a more venerable ruin, we rested opposite to the eastern window of the choir, where once the high altar stood, and, with five other altars, assisted the religious pomp of the scene; the images and the manners of times, that were past, rose to reflection. The midnight procession of monks, clothed in white and bearing lighted tapers, appeared to the "mind's eye" issuing to the choir through the very door-case, by which such processions were wont to pass from the cloisters to perform the matin service, when, at the moment of their entering the church, the deep chanting of voices was heard, and the organ swelled a solemn peal. To fancy, the strain still echoed feebly along the arcades and died in the breeze among the woods, the rustling leaves mingling with the close. It was easy to image the abbot and the officiating priests seated beneath the richly-fretted canopy of the four stalls, that still remain entire in the southern wall, and high over which is now perched a solitary yew-tree, a black funereal memento to the living of those who once sat below.