Part 8
Some miles further, we crossed the Leck, a shrunk and desolate stream, nearly choked with pebbles, winding in a deep rocky glen, where trees and shrubs marked the winter boundary of the waters. Our road, mounting a green eminence of the opposite bank, on which stands Overborough, the handsome modern mansion of Mr. FENWICK, wound between plantations and meadows, painted with yellow and purple flowers, like those of spring. As we passed through their gentle slopes, we had, now and then, sweet views between the foliage, on the left, into the vale of Lonsdale, now contracting in its course, and winding into ruder scenery. Among these catches, the best picture was, perhaps, where the white town of Kirby Lonsdale shelves along the opposite bank, having rough heathy hills immediately above it, and, below, a venerable Gothic bridge over the Lune, rising in tall arches, like an antient aqueduct; its grey tint agreeing well with the silvery lightness of the water and the green shades, that flourished from the steep margin over the abutments.
The view from this bridge, too, was beautiful. The river, foaming below among masses of dark rock, variegated with light tints of grey, as if touched by the painter's pencil, withdrew towards the south in a straight channel, with the woods of Overborough on the left. The vale, dilating, opened a long perspective to Ingleborough and many blue mountains more distant, with all the little villages we had passed, glittering on the intervening eminences. The colouring of some low hills, on the right, was particularly beautiful, long shades of wood being overtopped with brown heath, while, below, meadows of soft verdure fell gently towards the river bank.
Kirby Lonsdale, a neat little town, commanding the whole vale, is on the western steep. We staid two hours at it, gratified by witnessing, at the first inn we reached, the abundance of the country and the goodwill of the people. In times, when the prices of necessary articles are increasing with the taste for all unnecessary display, instances of cheapness may be to persons of small incomes something more than mere physical treasures; they have a moral value in contributing to independence of mind.
Here we had an early and, as it afterwards appeared, a very exaggerated specimen of the dialect of the country. A woman talked, for five minutes, against our window, of whose conversation we could understand scarcely a word. Soon after, a boy replied to a question, "_I do na ken_," and "_gang_" was presently the common word for _go_; symptoms of nearness to a country, which we did not approach, without delighting to enumerate the instances of genius and worth, that adorn it.
Leaving Kirby Lonsdale by the Kendal road, we mounted a steep hill, and, looking back from its summit upon the whole vale of Lonsdale, perceived ourselves to be in the mid-way between beauty and desolation, so enchanting was the retrospect and so wild and dreary the prospect. From the neighbourhood of Caton to Kirby the ride was superior, for elegant beauty, to any we had passed; this from Kirby to Kendal is of a character distinctly opposite. After losing sight of the vale, the road lies, for nearly the whole distance, over moors and perpetually succeeding hills, thinly covered with dark purple heath flowers, of which the most distant seemed black. The dreariness of the scene was increased by a heavy rain and by the slowness of our progress, jostling amongst coal carts, for ten miles of rugged ground. The views over the Westmoreland mountains were, however, not entirely obscured; their vast ridges were visible in the horizon to the north and west, line over line, frequently in five or six ranges. Sometimes the intersecting mountains opened to others beyond, that fell in deep and abrupt precipices, their profiles drawing towards a point below and seeming to sink in a bottomless abyss.
On our way over these wilds, parts of which are called Endmoor and Cowbrows, we overtook only long trains of coal carts, and, after ten miles of bleak mountain road, began to desire a temporary home, somewhat sooner than we perceived Kendal, white-smoking in the dark vale. As we approached, the outlines of its ruinous castle were just distinguishable through the gloom, scattered in masses over the top of a small round hill, on the right. At the entrance of the town, the river Kent dashed in foam down a weir; beyond it, on a green slope, the gothic tower of the church was half hid by a cluster of dark trees; gray fells glimmered in the distance.
We were lodged at another excellent inn, and, the next morning, walked over the town, which has an air of trade mingled with that of antiquity. Its history has been given in other places, and we are not able to discuss the doubt, whether it was the Roman _Brocanonacio_, or not. The manufacture of cloth, which our statute books testify to have existed as early as the reign in which _Falstaff_ is made to allude to it, appears to be still in vigour, for the town is surrounded, towards the river, with dyeing-grounds. We saw, however, no shades of "Kendal green," or, indeed, any but bright scarlet.
The church is remarkable for three chapels, memorials of the antient dignity of three neighbouring families the Bellinghams, Stricklands and Parrs. These are enclosures, on each side of the altar, differing from pews chiefly in being large enough to contain tombs. Mr. Gray noticed them minutely in the year 1769. They were then probably entire; but the wainscot or railing, which divided the chapel of the Parrs from the aisle, is now gone. Of two stone tombs in it one is enclosed with modern railing, and there are many remnants of painted arms on the adjoining windows. The chapel of the Stricklands, which is between this and the altar, is separated from the church aisle by a solid wainscot, to the height of four feet, and after that by a wooden railing with broken fillagree ornaments. That of the Bellinghams contains an antient tomb, of which the brass plates, that bore inscriptions and arms, are now gone, but some traces of the latter remain in plaistered stone at the side. Over it, are the fragments of an helmet, and, in the roof, those of armorial bearings, carved in wood. On a pillar, near this, is an inscription, almost obliterated, in which the following words may yet be traced:
"Dame Thomasim Thornburgh Wiffe of Sir William Thornburgh Knyght Daughter of Sir Robert Bellingham Gentle Knyght: the ellventhe of August On thousand fyue hundreth eightie too."
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The Saxon has been so strongly engrafted on our language, that, in reading old inscriptions, especially those, which are likely to have been spelt, according to the pronunciation, one is frequently reminded by antient English words of the modern German synonyms. A German of the present day would say for eleven, eilf, pronounced long like eilve, and for five, funf, pronounced like fuynf.
Over the chief seat in the old pew of the Bellinghams is a brass plate, engraved with the figure of a man in armour, and, on each side of it, a brass escutcheon, of which that on the right has a motto thus spelled, _Ains. y L'est_. Under the figure is the following inscription, also cut in brass:
Heer lyeth the bodye of Alan Bellingham esquier who maryed Catheryan daughter of Anthonye Ducket esquier by whom he had no children after whose decease he maryed Dorothie daughter of Thomas Sanford esquier of whom he had ---- sonnes & eight daughters, of which five sonnes & 7 daughters with the said Dorothie ar yeat lyving, he was threescore and one yares of age & dyed ye 7 of Maye Ao dni 1577.
The correctness of inserting the unpronounced consonants in the words Eight and Daughters, notwithstanding the varieties of the other orthography in this inscription, is a proof of the universality of the Saxon mode of spelling, with great abundance and even waste of letters; a mode, which is so incorporated with our language, that those, who are for dispensing with it in some instances, as in the final k in "publick" and other words, should consider what a general change they have to effect, or what partial incongruities they must submit to.
Kendal is built on the lower steeps of a hill, that towers over the principal street, and bears on one of its brows a testimony to the independence of the inhabitants, an obelisk dedicated to liberty and to the memory of the Revolution in 1688. At a time, when the memory of that revolution is reviled, and the praises of liberty itself endeavoured to be suppressed by the artifice of imputing to it the crimes of anarchy, it was impossible to omit any act of veneration to the blessings of this event. Being thus led to ascend the hill, we had a view of the country, over which it presides; a scene simple, great and free as the spirit revered amidst it.
FROM KENDAL TO BAMPTON AND HAWSWATER.
Of two roads from Kendal to Bampton one is through Long Sleddale, the other over Shap-fell, the king of the Westmoreland mountains; of which routes the last is the most interesting for simple sublimity, leading through the heart of the wildest tracts and opening to such vast highland scenery as even Derbyshire cannot shew. We left Kendal by this road, and from a very old, ruinous bridge had a full view of the castle, stretching its dark walls and broken towers round the head of a green hill, to the southward of the town. These reliques are, however, too far separated by the decay of large masses of the original edifice, and contain little that is individually picturesque.
The road now lay through shady lanes and over undulating, but gradually ascending ground, from whence were pleasant views of the valley, with now and then a break in the hills, on the left, opening to a glimpse of the distant fells towards Windermere, gray and of more pointed form than any we had yet seen; for hitherto the mountains, though of huge outline, were not so broken, or alpine in their summits as to strike the fancy with surprise. After about three miles, a very steep hill shuts up the vale to the North, and from a gray rock, near the summit, called Stone-cragg, the prospect opens over the vale of Kendal with great dignity and beauty. Its form from hence seems nearly circular; the hills spread round it, and sweep with easy lines into the bottom, green nearly to their summits, where no fantastic points bend over it, though rock frequently mingles with the heath. The castle, or its low green hill, looked well, nearly in the centre of the landscape, with Kendal and its mountain, on the right. Far to the south, were the groves of Leven's park, almost the only wood in the scene, and, over the heights beyond, blue hills bounded the horizon. On the west, an opening in the near steeps discovered clusters of huge and broken fells, while other breaks, on the east, shewed long ridges stretching towards the south. Nearer us and to the northward, the hills rose dark and awful, crowding over and intersecting each other in long and abrupt lines, heath and crag their only furniture.
The rough knolls around us and the dark mountain above gave force to the verdant beauty and tranquillity of the vale below, and seemed especially to shelter from the storms of the north some white farms and cottages, scattered among enclosures in the hollows. Soon after reaching the summit of the mountain itself
"A vale appear'd below, a deep retir'd abode,"
and we looked down on the left into Long Sleddale, a little scene of exquisite beauty, surrounded with images of greatness. This narrow vale, or glen, shewed a level of the brightest verdure, with a few cottages scattered among groves, enclosed by dark fells, that rose steeply, yet gracefully, and, at their summits, bent forward in masses of shattered rock. An hugely pointed mountain, called Keintmoor-head, shuts up this sweet scene to the north, rising in a sudden precipice from the vale, and heightening, by barren and gloomy steeps, the miniature beauty, that glowed at its feet. Two mountains, called Whiteside and Potter's-fell, screen the perspective; Stone-crag is at the southern end, fronting Keintmoor-head. The vale, seen beyond the broken ground we were upon, formed a landscape of, perhaps, unexampled variety and grace of colouring; the tender green of the lowland, the darker verdure of the woods ascending the mountains, the brown rough heath above them, and the impending crags over all, exhibit their numerous shades, within a space not more than two miles long, or half a mile in breadth.
From the right of our road another valley extended, whose character is that of simple sublimity, unmixed with any tint of beauty. The vast, yet narrow perspective sweeps in ridges of mountains, huge, barren and brown, point beyond point, the highest of which, Howgill-fell, gives its name to the whole district, in which not a wood, a village, or a farm appeared to cheer the long vista. A shepherd boy told us the names of almost all the heights within the horizon, and we are sorry not to have written them, for the names of mountains are seldom compounded of modern, or trivial denominations, and frequently are somewhat descriptive of their prototypes. He informed us also, that we should go over eight miles of Shap-fell, without seeing a house; and soon after, at Haw's-foot, we took leave of the last on the road, entering then a close valley, surrounded by stupendous mountains of heath and rock, more towering and abrupt than those, that had appeared in moorlands on the other side of Kendal. A stream, rolling in its rocky channel, and crossing the road under a rude bridge, was all that broke the solitary silence, or gave animation to the view, except the flocks, that hung upon the precipices, and which, at that height, were scarcely distinguishable from the gray round stones, thickly starting from out the heathy steeps. The Highlands of Scotland could scarcely have offered to OSSIAN more images of simple greatness, or more circumstances for melancholy inspiration. Dark glens and fells, the mossy stone, the lonely blast, descending on the valley, the roar of distant torrents every where occurred; and to the bard the "song of spirits" would have swelled with these sounds, and their fleeting forms have appeared in the clouds, that frequently floated along the mountain tops.
The road, now ascending Shap-fell, alternately climbed the steeps and sunk among the hollows of this sovereign mountain, which gives its name to all the surrounding hills; and, during an ascent of four miles, we watched every form and attitude of the features, which composed this vast scenery. Sometimes we looked from a precipice into deep vallies, varied only with shades of heath, with the rude summer hut of the shepherd, or by streams accumulating into torrents; and, at others, caught long prospects over high lands as huge and wild as the nearer ones, which partially intercepted them.
The flocks in this high region are so seldom disturbed by the footsteps of man, that they have not learned to fear him; they continued to graze within a few feet of the carriage, or looked quietly at it, seeming to consider these mountains as their own.
Near the summit of the road, though not of the hill, a retrospective glance gave us a long view over the fells, and of a rich distance towards Lancaster, rising into blue hills, which admitted glimpses of sparkling sea in the bay beyond. This gay perspective, lighted up by a gleam of sunshine, and viewed between the brown lines of the nearer mountains, shewed like the miniature painting of a landscape, illuminated beyond a darkened fore-ground.
At the point of every steep, as we ascended, the air seemed to become thinner, and, at the northern summit of Shap-fell, which we reached after nearly two hours' toil, the wind blew with piercing intenseness, making it difficult to remain as long as was due to our admiration of the prospect. The scene of mountains, which burst upon us, can be compared only to the multitudinous waves of the sea. On the northern, western and eastern scope of the horizon rose vast ridges of heights, their broken lines sometimes appearing in seven or eight successive ranges, though shewing nothing either fantastic or peaked in their forms. The autumnal lights, gleaming on their sides, or shadows sweeping in dark lines along them, produced a very sublime effect; while summits more remote were often misty with the streaming shower, and others glittered in the partial rays, or were coloured with the mild azure of distance. The greater tract of the intervening hills and Shap-fell itself were, at this time, darkened with clouds, while Fancy, awed by the gloom, imaged the genius of Westmoreland brooding over it and directing the scowling storm.
A descent of nearly four miles brought us to Shap, a straggling village, lying on the side of a bleak hill, feebly sheltered by clumps of trees. Here, leaving the moorlands, we were glad to find ourselves again where "bells have knolled to church," and in the midst of civilized, though simple life. After a short rest, at a cleanly little inn, we proceeded towards Bampton, a village five miles further in a vale, to which it gives its name, and one mile from Hawswater, the lake, that invited us to it. As the road advanced, the fells of this lake fronted it, and, closing over the southern end of Bampton vale, were the most interesting objects in the view. They were of a character very different from any yet seen; tall, rocky, and of more broken and pointed form. Among them was the high blue peak, called Kidstow-pike; the broader ridge of Wallow-crag; a round and still loftier mountain--Ickolm-moor, beyond, and, further yet, other ranges of peaked summits, that overlook Ullswater.
In a hollow on the left of the road, called the Vale of Magdalene, are the ruins of Shap-abbey, built in the reign of John, of which little now appears except a tower with pointed windows. The situation is deeply secluded, and the gloom of the surrounding mountains may have accorded well with monastic melancholy.
Proceeding towards Bampton we had a momentary peep into Hawswater, sunk deep among black and haggard rocks, and overtopped by the towering fells before named, whose summits were involved in tempest, till the sun, suddenly breaking out from under clouds, threw a watery gleam aslant the broken top of Kidstow-pike; and his rays, struggling with the shower, produced a fine effect of light, opposed to the gloom, that wrapt Ickolm-moor and other huge mountains.
We soon after looked down from the heights of Bampton upon its open vale, checquered with corn and meadows, among which the slender Lowther wound its way from Hawswater to the vale of Eden, crossing that of Bampton to the north. The hills, enriched here and there with hanging woods and seats, were cultivated nearly to their summits, except where in the south the rude heights of Hawswater almost excluded the lake and shut up the valley. Immediately below us Bampton grange lay along the skirt of the hill, and crossed the Lowther, a gray, rambling and antient village, to which we descended among rough common, darkened by plantations of fir, and between corn enclosures.
The interruption, which enclosed waters and pathless mountains give to the intercourse and business of ordinary life, renders the district, that contains the lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland, more thinly inhabited than is due to the healthiness of the climate and, perhaps, to the richness of the vallies. The roads are always difficult from their steepness, and in winter are greatly obstructed by snow. That over Shap-fell to Kendal was, some years since, entirely impassable, till the inhabitants of a few scattered towns subscribed thirty pounds, and a way was cut wide enough for one horse, but so deep, that the snow was, on each side, above the rider's head. It is not in this age of communication and intelligence, that any person will be credulously eager to suppose the inhabitants of one part of the island considerably or generally distinguished in their characters from those of another; yet, perhaps, none can immerge themselves in this country of the lakes, without being struck by the superior simplicity and modesty of the people. Secluded from great towns and from examples of selfish splendour, their minds seem to act freely in the sphere of their own affairs, without interruption from envy or triumph, as to those of others. They are obliging, without servility, and plain but not rude, so that, when, in accosting you, they omit the customary appellations, you perceive it to be the familiarity of kindness, not of disrespect; and they do not bend with meanness, or hypocrisy, but shew an independent well meaning, without obtrusiveness and without the hope of more than ordinary gain.
Their views of profit from strangers are, indeed, more limited than we could have believed, before witnessing it. The servants at the little inns confess themselves, by their manner of receiving what you give, to be almost as much surprised as pleased. A boy, who had opened four or five gates for us between Shap and Bampton, blushed when we called to him to have some halfpence; and it frequently happened, that persons, who had looked at the harness, or rendered some little services of that sort on the road, passed on, before any thing could be offered them. The confusion of others, on being paid, induced us to suppose, at first, that enough had not been given; but we were soon informed, that nothing was expected.
The inns, as here at Bampton, are frequently humble; and those, who are disposed to clamour for luxuries, as if there was a crime in not being able to supply them, may confound a simple people, and be themselves greatly discontented, before they go. But those, who will be satisfied with comforts, and think the experience of integrity, carefulness and goodwill is itself a luxury, will be glad to have stopped at Bampton and at several other little villages, where there is some sort of preparation for travellers.
Nor is this secluded spot without provision for the mind. A beneficed grammar school receives the children of the inhabitants, and sends, we believe, some to an University. Bishop GIBSON received his education at it. Bishop LAW, who was born at Bampton, went daily across one, or two of the rudest fells on the lake to another school, at Martindale; an exercise of no trifling fatigue, or resolution; for among the things to be gained by seeing the lakes is a conception of the extreme wildness of their boundaries. You arrive with a notion, that you can and dare rove any where amongst the mountains; and have only to see three to have the utmost terror of losing your way.
The danger of wandering in theses regions without a guide is increased by an uncertainty, as to the titles of heights; for the people of each village have a name for the part of a mountain nearest to themselves, and they sometimes call the whole by that name. The circumference of such heights is also too vast, and the flexures too numerous to admit of great accuracy. Skiddaw, Saddleback and Helvellyn, may, however be certainly distinguished. There are others, a passage over which would save, perhaps, eight or ten miles out of twenty, but which are so little known, except to the shepherds, that they are very rarely crossed by travellers. We could not trust to any person's knowledge of Harter-fell, beyond the head of Hawswater.
HAWSWATER.