Part 8

Those travelling in a country new to them are often more struck by some feature of the landscape different to what they have been accustomed to, than by the grander outlines of the scenery. Who, for instance, that has ever travelled in Western Cornwall, can fail to recollect the milestones in the shapes of obelisks, or the substitutes for stiles formed by narrow openings in the hedges with stepping-stones placed at equal distances, like the ploughshares in the ordeal by fire, for foot passengers to pass across? The little cabbage-plantation or mound of _debris_ in the centre of a field is another characteristically Cornish institution. Any account of Cornwall would be incomplete without some allusion to the pilchard fishery, next to mining, the great industry of the county. Innumerable quantities of this fish are annually salted and exported to the Roman Catholic countries of Southern Europe to be eaten during Lent. The popular Cornish name of the pilchard, "Fair Maid," is said to be from the Spanish _fumado,--i.e._, "smoked fish."

THE ENGLISH LAKE DISTRICT.

AMELIA BARR.

[The lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, England, possess a double attraction to the tourist, the one being for their intrinsic beauty and charm, the other for their fame as the loved haunts of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and other famed writers. They have become a place of pilgrimage to the devotees of poetry, and we give their story in the words of one who saw in them this double charm.]

While dinner was being prepared, we strolled to the bridge which spans the Leven,--at this point a swift, shallow stream, with an inconceivable sparkle, scarcely deep enough to float the light skiff in whose shadow a great trout was posing himself against the crystal water. In half an hour we had a couple of his fellows in a napkin, deliciously browned. It is worth while mentioning that Loch Lomond in Scotland and Lake Windermere in England discharge by rivers of the same length and name; but the Scotch Leven passes through a bleak, uninteresting country, while the English Leven ripples and dances through a vale of sylvan beauty, full of the music of many cascades.

We hired a row-boat to take us up Windermere to the Ferry Inn; and here, as an old Laker, I may say, have nothing to do with a _sail_; take a row-boat, and you are safe; but all these mountain-locked waters are subject to what is known in the district as a "bottom-wind;" and the sail-boat caught in that passionate gust will need the most skilful handling.

As we neared Storrs Hall, all the bright loveliness of the lake broke upon us, as it did upon Scott in 1825, on that memorable day when Southey, Wilson, Wordsworth, and Canning met him here, and Windermere glittered with all her sails in honor of the great Northern minstrel. The Bailie had the whole passage from Lockhart's Life of Scott by heart,--the brilliant cavalcades through the woods, the boatings on the lake by moonlight, the music and sunshine, the flags and streamers, the gay dresses and beautiful women, the hum of voices, the cheers of the multitude, and the splash of innumerable oars: he recalled for us the whole scene of the flotilla, as it wound among the beautiful isles of the loveliest lake in the world, half a century ago.

We had sent our luggage on to the Salutation Inn at Ambleside, for we had determined to stay one night at the Ferry Inn, nearly opposite Bowness, and about half-way up the lake. I had wonderful memories of this charming old hostelry, and many a time, when thousands of miles away, I had heard the pleasure-skiffs fret their cut-waters against the pebbly shore, many a time in dreams dripped silver from my oars in the moonlight, or wandered in the groves of laurel and lilacs and laburnums behind it.

Then it was a perfect old English inn, with a kitchen whose Homeric breadth and bright cheerfulness made it a constant picture. Then there was on one side of it a curiously carved and twisted oaken dresser, extending from the floor to the ceiling, black with age and bright with labor. Mugs and tankards of bright pewter stood out against this dark background; huge hams and sad-colored herbs descended from the rafters. A great wood-fire always blazed on the hearth. Lasses in snow-white jackets and linsey-woolsey petticoats went in and out about their duties. The handsome, motherly landlady looked after every guest; and Arnold, the jolliest landlord that ever lived, sat smoking in the ingle, chatting with some traveller, or listening to the yarn of a lake fisherman.

As we approached the little bay, I saw that the Ferry Inn had gone; a grand modern hotel stood upon its site. I refused to be disenchanted. Perhaps Arnold was dead also. Nothing could be as it had been, and I asked to cross over at once to Bowness. But, while I am speaking of Arnold, I may tell again a story he was very fond of telling about Wordsworth.

"Knaw'd Wadswuth?" he would say, with a merry twinkle. "I did, a few. This wuz the way I comed to knaw him, so as I shan't forget 'n again in a hurry. When I wuz guard of the Whitehaven mail, as we wuz a-slapping along, and just coming to a sharpish turn,--the carner near the bridge, this side Keswick,--what should we see but sumthin' uncommon tall and grand, tooling along a little pony-shay!

"'Oh, Lord! here's a smash,' said I, and afore the words wuz out of my mouth, crash went the shay all to smitherins, and slap went the driver over a wall into a plantation, arms out and great-coat a-flying. We thought fur sure 'twas all over with 'n; but presently he picked hisself up uncommon tall again, and sez he, 'I'll have this matter thoroughly investigated.' With that he walked off towards the public.

"'Bill,' said coachee to I, very down like, 'who de think that is?'

"'Well, who be 't, Jem?' sez I.

"'Why, who but the powit Wadswuth.'"

Then he would add, "If you goes to Keswick, just by the bridge you'll see the place _where we spilt the powit_! Ay, often and often since that, when I've a-seen the grand fowks draw up to the Mount, I've a-said sly like to myself, 'Ah, gentlemen, you be going to see the powit, but you never had him to call upon you, unexpected like, on a flying visit over a wall.'"

Windermere at Bowness is like what the Thames is at Richmond. Bowness is the pleasure-village of the lake country. There yachtsmen flourish and beauties linger. The band makes music in the grounds of the Royal Hotel, and the crowds promenade or float gracefully past in the dreamy waltz. Every window is open, the balconies are full of life and color, lovely faces peep out from among the clustering clematis, twinkling lights and soft strains are on the lake until midnight, and flowers, flowers, flowers touch you everywhere.

Two men, as dissimilar as possible, I can always see in the streets of Bowness--the handsome Professor Wilson, poet and athlete, whom the Westmoreland people so aptly described as "strang as a lion, lish as a trout, _wi' sich antics as niver_," and the little, plain-faced, serious Wilberforce,--Wilson joyous and strong, and settling all things "wi' the waff o' his hand," Wilberforce sauntering along, as he tells us in his diary, comforting himself by repeating the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm. Wilson lived at Elleray, now close to Windermere railway-station, and Wilberforce had a residence among the stately woods of Rayrigg, just outside Bowness.

The next morning we started for Ambleside, taking on the way the village of Troutbeck. Troutbeck is a funny misnomer for the rivulet so named, for not a trout has ever been found in it. But for a typically exquisite village, no dream of painter or poet can rival it. The cottages, with their numerous gables, seem to have been built on some model conceived by the rarest poetical genius. They are of the stone and slate of the country; age has given them "a green radiance" and bathed them in the lustre of lichens. The porches are of meeting tree-stems or reclining cliffs, and are dripping with roses and matted with virgin bower. Nowhere else in the world is there "a mile-long congregation of such rural dwellings, dropped down just where a painter or poet would wish them, and bound together by old groves of ash, oak, and sycamores, by flower-gardens and fruit-orchards rich as those of the Hesperides."...

There are places we visit and forget, but this is never the case with Ambleside; walk through its streets, and they become forever a part of the spirit's still domains. John Ruskin, in his "Characteristics of Nature," has referred to the peculiar influence which is exerted upon people who live in a neighborhood where granite is abundant; and Wordsworth tells us that

"One impulse from a vernal wood May teach us more of man, Of moral evil, and of good, Than all the sages can."

If this be true, then what influence must be morally exerted over those who dwell in such a bower of Paradise as Ambleside!

The vale of Windermere is watered by two little rivers, the Rothay and Brathay. They unite a few yards above the head of the lake, and enter it together. In the spawning season a singular sight may be witnessed at this spot: the trout and char, for which Windermere is famous, separate where the rivers meet; the char go up Brathay to spawn, the trout all go up Rothay.

The most charming way to see the vale of Ambleside is to saunter about it; to walk to Stock Ghyll Force and look at the old mill made famous by the painting of Birket Foster; to lean over Rothay Bridge and Pelter Bridge and dream away the hours on the shores of the wildly-sylvan Rydalmere; or to go into Rydal Park and lose ourselves among the cooing of cushats and the shrill cries of blackbirds. Stock Ghyll Force is worth seeing. The word "force" is one of the few words of the past still lingering in secluded places: it signifies to "rush thoroughly:" the waters fall from a height of seventy feet, and make a terrific noise as they rush in two channels down the rocky gorge.

The slopes are covered with the rarest ferns, probably most of them indigenous to the soil, for we were told that few of them lived if transplanted from it. The path leading to the falls now belongs to the town of Ambleside, but a year or two ago it was in the possession of a gentleman who purchased the property at an auction. It had always been free and open to the public, but this speculative individual bought up the waterfall and hemmed it in with a fence. He then made a charge for admission. The townspeople were indignant; a sum of a thousand pounds was raised, and the man bought out at double the amount. The toll for the present is charged, but it will be abolished as soon as the other thousand has been collected,--a consummation fully expected during the present year.

The spirits of the great and good walk the lovely lanes and climb the hills with us, for all around Ambleside is haunted ground. Just outside is the ivy-covered house so long the home of Harriet Martineau, one of the bravest and hardest-working women that ever lived.

"Day by day our memory fades From out the circle of the hills,"

but the memory of the invalid deaf lady, so loving, so simple, so neighborly, so old in years, so young in heart, is one that will not soon be forgotten, even in the land of Wordsworth and Southey and Arnold.

A little farther, Fox How nestles at the foot of a craggy height. This was for many years the home of Dr. Arnold; and not far away is Fox Ghyll, a beautiful villa belonging to the Right Honorable W. E. Forster, who, it will be remembered, married a daughter of Dr. Arnold's. Mr. Forster spends a great deal of his time here, glad to escape the "madding crowd" and the bickering and fever of political life.

A lovely drive through "a spot made for nature by herself" brought us to Rydal Mount, so long the home of Wordsworth. He went there in 1813, and at that time the lakes were hardly known. The poet Gray was the only eminent Englishman who visited them before the present century, and he complained that "the great forests and the total want of communication was a barrier he could not surmount." Upon Goldsmith they made no impression; and Tickell, born within a mile of Derwentwater, has not a line in their praise, though he wrote a long poem on Kensington Gardens. But in 1813 Englishmen were compelled to travel in their own country, for Napoleon had closed the continent of Europe to them, or, as a Westmoreland woman expressed it, "there was sic a deal of uneasiness i' France."

And here I may notice, in passing, the peculiar habit of _understating_ everything, so characteristic of Westmoreland people. Where a Yorkshire man would say unequivocally, "The fellow is a scoundrel," the Westmoreland man would remark. "There were a deal o' folks more particler about doin' reet nor him." A bad man is a bad man all the world over, except in Westmoreland: there he is "a varra moderate chap." All over the world, when it rains as hard as it can, people do not scruple to say, "It rains hard;" but a Westmoreland man only admits, "It's softish."...

At Rydal Mount, Wordsworth lived nearly forty years, roaming over the mountains or sitting down by some lonely tarn to write his "solemn-thoughted idylls;" for he seldom wrote in-doors. A visitor once asked to see his study, and a servant showed her a room containing a number of books. "This is the master's library," she said: "his study is out o' doors and up on t'hill-tops." The house is a lovely spot now, but it owes much to Wordsworth. I have a drawing of it, made soon after he removed there, which represents only a very plain stone house, standing on a natural terrace of turf. The interior has been often described, for no visitor with a respectable claim on the poet's attention was ever turned away. But it is now in the possession of a man who suffers no one to approach it. In fact, he has taken care to post conspicuously the following notice: "No person is allowed in these grounds under any circumstances." In 1850, Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount,--a sweetly-solemn death, which gave to his mourning heart the glad assurance that he was "going to Dora," his dearly beloved daughter, whose death on the threshold of a beautiful and happy womanhood he had never ceased to mourn.

On the road which skirts Rydal Water is Nab Cottage, forever associated with De Quincey and poor Hartley Coleridge. Standing before it, how easy it was to imagine the small, fragile Opium-Eater, with his wrinkled face and arched brows loaded with thought, and those haunted eyes peering out from their dark rings! How vividly we could see him in the small parlor, with its five thousand books and bright fire and decanter of laudanum, or imagine him rambling through the summer nights upon the hills, in solitary possession of the whole sleeping country, when that fine expression he applied to Coleridge in similar situations might so well designate himself,--"an insulated son of revery"!

[The travellers next set out for a tramp to the top of Helvellyn, the loftiest mountain of the lake district. On their way thither they came upon an interesting pastoral scene.]

The farm-yard went straight up the hill, but was surrounded by buildings of every kind. What a busy, merry, picturesque gathering was in it! The old men, in clean, white shirt-sleeves, with long clay pipes in their mouths, were wandering about the yard, watching the shearers, who were working with a silent rapidity that showed a very keen contest. For these "shearings" are a kind of rural Olympics; and proud is the young farmer who has finished his sixscore sheep in a day.

There were seven shearers present, wonderfully handsome, stalwart fellows. Each sat upon a bench, their pillar-like throats uncovered, their arms bare to the shoulder; and, as the sheep were brought to them, they lifted them on to the bench, turned them with the greatest ease, and cut off the wool with amazing rapidity, rarely allowing the shears to injure the animal. If such an accident occurred, it was a blemish on the shearer's fame.

At a long impromptu table women were just as rapidly folding the fleeces ready for market. Some were handsome matrons, some were young lasses, but all wore the snow-white kirtle and the short, striped linsey petticoat that showed their slender ankles and trimly-shod feet. Peals of merry laughter and shafts of harmless satire flew from them to the shearers, who were far too busy to answer just then, but who doubtless promised themselves future opportunities. In a small enclosure at the extreme end there was perhaps the merriest group of all,--about a dozen school-lads, whose duty it was to bring the sheep to the shearers. How the heated air quivered above the panting creatures, and how the lads laughed and shouted and tugged and pulled and pushed and dragged, their brown faces glowing to crimson, their parted scarlet lips and intense blue eyes making them perfect pictures of splendidly healthy, happy boyhood!

And with what indulgent tolerance the sheep-dogs watched them! I am sure the good-natured ones laughed quietly to themselves at all the unnecessary fuss, while others lay with their heads between their paws and opened their eyes sarcastically at the whole affair. They would have taken a sheep by the ear and walked it up to the bench without a bark. It was a perfect idyllic picture, in which every age of manhood and womanhood blended.

At sundown over six hundred sheep had been sheared, and a number of visitors arrived. Then a feast was spread for more than fifty people, and after it the fiddlers took the place of honor, and dancing began. No one could resist the mirthful infection, and, after a slight hesitation, Christina drew on her gloves and allowed herself to be persuaded to open the ball with "the master." She was just stepping daintily down the middle, with a smile on her face, when the Bailie looked in at the open door. He professed to be "vera weary;" but in half an hour he was taking his part in "Moneymusk" with a lively agility that won him much admiration. "Such hours dinna come every day," he said. And so we stayed until the dancing ceased and the company scattered at the fell foot into parties of twos and threes.

[From Grasmere they made their way to Keswick, the capital town of the lake district, and the home of Southey and Coleridge.]

When Southey came to Greta Hall, in 1803, Coleridge, the "noticeable man with large gray eyes," was living there, delighting the reading world with his vast and luminous intellect and his Miltonic conceptions, reaching "the caverns measureless to man." Here that marvellous boy Hartley ran about, and so charmed Coleridge's landlord that he could scarcely be persuaded to take the rent for Greta Hall, considering the joy of the child's company a full equivalent. For three years Coleridge and Southey occupied the Hall together; then Coleridge became the slave of that opium-habit which made his comings and goings more uncertain than a comet's. He flitted about between Southey and Wordsworth; and never since Shakespeare's time have three men of equal genius lived on such terms. Landor called them "three towers of one castle." Very soon De Quincey made a fourth in this remarkable group. And two of them were wise, and two of them were stranded on the same poppy-covered coast, the land of the Lotos-Eaters.

We wandered about Keswick, but wherever we went the shades of these great men followed us, and half a mile out of it, on the Penrith road, we were suddenly met by another wraith of genius, for there stood the pretty cottage to which Shelley brought his first wife, the lovely woman of humble birth whom he offended society by marrying. Here they were visited by the Southeys and De Quincey, and the latter in his "Sketches" has a very charming picture of the girl-wife playing gravity before her visitors and running about the garden with Percy when they were tired of the house. Shelley was then nineteen and Southey thirty-seven; and Southey says, "Shelley acts upon me as my own ghost might do; he has all my old dreams and enthusiasms: the only difference is the difference of age."

Many bitter things were said of the handsome, gifted Shelley in his day; but, as Dr. Arnold in his quaint, Luther-like phraseology observes, "Doubtless it is good for a man to have to do with Mr. Posterity," for that impartial judge has done Shelley justice. We bought his "Alastor" as we went back to the hotel, and in the evening twilight read it, remembering the while that it was written "in the contemplation of death, which he felt to be certain and near."...

The next day we went around Derwentwater in a boat,--certainly the best way to see it, for the bays and islands and points of interest on this lovely sheet of water can thus be leisurely visited. Soon after leaving Keswick, Skiddaw appears to rise from within a stone's cast of the shore, and continues a magnificent object during most of the way. At the head of the lake the mountains rise, height above height, from the Lodore crags to the lofty summits of Scawfell Pike and Scawfell, the latter the highest mountain in England. Southey had told us how "the water comes down at Lodore," but we wished to see it for ourselves: so we landed at the long wooden pier belonging to the Lodore Hotel, and, guided by the tremendous roar, scrambled a short distance among the crags and boulders, and saw the wild waters

"Retreating and beating, and meeting and sheeting, Delaying and straying, and playing and spraying, Advancing and prancing, and glancing and dancing, Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling and boiling, And gleaming and streaming, and steaming and beaming, And rushing and flushing, and brushing and gushing, And curling and whirling, and purling and twirling, And flapping and rapping, and clapping and slapping, And dashing and flashing, and splashing and crashing, And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending, All at once and all over, with mighty uproar, And this way the water comes down at Lodore."

THE ROMAN WALL OF CUMBERLAND.

ROSE G. KINGSLEY.

[On the borders of Cumberland, at the northern boundary of Roman occupation of England, a wall of defence against the barbarians of Scotland was built, and manned by sturdy legions. This wall still exists, and its present condition is described below.]

Half an hour's drive brought us to the farm-house at Birdoswald, and here the real interest of our expedition began. We were now on the Roman Wall; and, except Borcovicus or Housteads, near the Northumberland lakes, Birdoswald is the most perfect station along its line. It is supposed to be the Roman Ambloganna, which was garrisoned by a strong force of Dacians from Wallachia and Moldavia. The camp is five and a half acres in extent. The eastern gate-way is in very perfect preservation, the large blocks on each side of the double portal being in their original position and still containing the pivot-holes. The arch above the gate-way is gone; but some of the stones which formed it lie strewn about. Close to the gate are the ruins of a guard-house, and a portion of the boundary-wall, six feet in breadth. The western and southern gate-ways and walls are all well preserved, the walls having five or six courses of facing-stones, and being seven to eight feet thick.