CHAPTER XXXIII.

_The Lakes and the Lakers._

As I am now detailing my “Impressions of England,” I must leave out my Scottish chapters, for Scotland is far too rich in material to be smuggled into the world under any cover except its own. After a most interesting visit to this romantic land, I again saw England as I approached the Cumberland mountains, at Ecclefechan, and in spite of my delight in Caledonia, I somehow felt that it was home. I reached “Gretna Green” from a direction the opposite of that which is the fashion for runaways, and hence saw nothing of “the blacksmith;” but I was informed that he duly posts himself at the station when the train approaches from the other direction, and very frequently finds customers. It is not now as in the days of posting; and if a brace of lovers can make sure of a train in advance of pursuers, they are quite safe. The next train may bring the frantic friends and parents; but the wedding is already performed, according to the barbarous law of North Britain. It has been remarked as something singular, if not disgraceful, that several who have risen to be Lord-Chancellors of the southern kingdom, were, in early life, married in this way. After a moment’s pause at the Gretna station, we were whirled across the Sark, with a glimpse of the Solway, and soon I was in “merrie Carlisle.” I entered it, thanks be to Bishop Percy, with special thoughts of “Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee.” The poetry of the town is, in fact, concentrated in that ballad of ballads. As a border town, it has always been subject to those fearful scenes and tragedies, which only war creates: and its history is a romance, from the days of the Conquest to those of the Pretender, whose flag once waved on its walls. It is charmingly situated, and well watered by its three rivers; but its castle and its cathedral are its chief objects of interest, and offer little that can be described with effect, after a review of more striking specimens of their kind. Among the tombs in the latter, is that of Archdeacon Paley, the _moralist_, who “could not afford to keep a conscience.” I did not regard it with any great emotion. The adjacent Deanery, at one time inhabited by Bishop Percy, was more interesting to me, for whatever he may have been as a bishop, I cannot doubt that his taste and industry in literature have produced a vast result in the poetry and letters of his native tongue. I have often amused myself, not only with his “ballads” themselves, but with an effort to trace their immediate and remote effects on the taste, and even upon the genius of England. They are very striking, and prove what may be the lasting results of a very humble sort of literary enterprise, when it is founded on “truths that wake to perish never.”

I was in the region of the Lakes, and felt upon me already the powerful influences which its great poets have left it for an heritage forever. The noble range of the Cumberlands seemed to lift their monumental heads, in memory of Southey and Wordsworth. I went to Kendal, and sighted the castle where Katherine Parr was born, but was glad to take the earliest train to Bowness. Welcome was the sight of Windermere, brightly reflecting the evening sky, and encircled by an army of mountains, lifting their bristling pikes as if to defend it, like a virgin sister in her loveliness. Who can forget Dr. Arnold’s enthusiastic return to this dear spot, from the Continent: his just comparison of its charms with those of foreign scenes, and his close noting of the very minutes that lingered as he hasted to his home at Fox How? To me, there is all the heart of poetry in his honest effusion of genuine English feeling. “I see the Old Man and the Langdale Pikes, rising behind the nearer hills so beautifully! We open on Windermere, and vain it is to talk of any earthly beauty ever equalling this country, in my eyes. No Mola di Gaeta, no Valley of the Velino, no Salerno or Vietri can rival, to me, this Vale of Windermere, and of the Rotha. Here it lies in the perfection of its beauty, the deep shadows on the unruffled water; and mingling with every form, and sound, and fragrance, comes the full thought of domestic affections, and of national and of Christian: here is our own house and home: here are our own country’s laws and language: and here is our English Church!” Good! glorious! every word. I can feel it all, and the last words more than he