miles north of Penrith, and eight from Pooley Bridge. It is the property of the Earl of Lonsdale. The road from Penrith best adapted for carriages is that by way of Shap; but the nearest and most picturesque road is that by way of Yanwath, Askham, Helton, and Bampton, in the vale of the Lowther, the line of which may be traced on the chart of Ulleswater. The latter road quits the Penrith and Pooley Bridge road at Yanwath ; after leaving that village, it crosses what was formerly Tirrel and Yanwath Moor, to Askham, five miles from Penrith. Helton is rather more than a mile beyond, and Bampton is nearly four miles further. Bishop Law of Carlisle, the friend of Paley, was born in this hamlet, and it is said that in the neighbourhood the last skirmish between the Scots and Westmerians took place. SHAP, a straggling village on the road between Kendal and Penrith, is five miles to the east of Bampton. The road connecting the two villages passes near the ruins of Shap Abbey, lying on the banks of the Lowther, now bare, but once occupied by a thick forest. This abbey, anciently called Heppe, was founded about the year 1150, by Thomas, the son of Gospatrick, for monks of the Premonstratensian order, and dedicated to St. Magdalen. Upon the dissolution, the abbey and manor were granted to Thomas Lord Wharton, for his eminent services against the Scotch when Warden of the Marches,* * from whose descendant, the first and last * His principal exploit was performed when governor of Carlisle, in 1542. With a detachment of 1400 horse and foot he routed an army of 15,000 Scots, at Sollom Moss, taking seven noblemen, with a great number of common soldiers, prisoners, and seizing their whole baggage and artillery. The Scots, on this occasion, designedly suffered defeat, in order to be revenged upon their king, James V., whom they detested. The unhappy monarch died of a broken heart shortly after the battle, so that the vengeance of his subjects was complete. This nobleman's descendant, the Duke, upon whom Pope has conferred an unenviable immortality, exhibited one of the most striking instances of talents misapplied, and energies wasted, that ever pointed a tale. It is surprising he has so long escaped the clutches of the novelist, for his life was full of adventure. He possessed uncommon personal graces, great natural ability, and unusual powers of eloquence, the effect of all being destroyed by profligate Duke of Wharton, they were purchased by an ancestor of the Earl of Lonsdale. The only part left standing is the church tower; but from the vestiges of buildings yet visible, the abbey appears to have been extensive. In the vicinity of Shap are two of those rude structures to which no certain date can be assigned, and which are therefore usually referred to the primitive times of habits and a wayward capriciousness of disposition, almost amounting to madness. A clandestine marriage occasioned such grief to his ambitious father as to have hastened his end. The talent and oratory he displayed on behalf of Government after his father's death attracted the applause of senates and the especial notice of the Crown to such a degree, that he was advanced a step in the peerage before he reached twenty-one. As if to gratify the worst wishes of his enemies, he then paid his court to the Pretender, and formally entered his service, changing at the same time the Protestant faith for the Catholic. Finally, he joined the Spanish army, when Spain was at war with England. This was the measure of his offences. Goverment could no longer brook a defection so entire in one of his elevated rank: he was attainted of high treason, and his estates confiscated. He died, the victim of his excesses, at a Capuchin Monastery in Spain, dependent upon the bounty of the monks. Richardson is said to have drawn the character of Lovelace from the Duke. We subjoin a portion of Pope's celebrated lines, in which "unhappy Wharton" is treated with more tenderness than (considering the subject) could have been looked for. The secret of the poet's leniency was, we suspect, the Duke's vigorous (yet, if the well-known anecdote be true, unprincipled) defence, in the House of Lords, of Atterbury, Pope's intimate friend. After all, the tender mercies of the Satirical are cruel. On reviewing this nobleman's life it is difficult to attribute its wild vagaries to the influence of any one ruling passion, certainly not to a love of praise, for no man ever more grossly outraged the conditions through which it is obtained, or seemed less to care how posterity would treat his name. "Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, * * * * Thus with each gift of nature and of art, the Druids. Karl Lofts, the name of one, consists of two parallel lines of unhewn masses of granite, half a mile long, by sixty or seventy feet broad, terminating at the south extremity in a small circle of similar blocks. Many of the granitic blocks have been barbarously carried off for building purposes, or some other "base use." At a place called Gunnerskeld Bottom there is a circle of large stones, thought to be a sepulchral cairn. Returning to Bampton from our visit to the antiquities at Shap, the foot of Hawes Water is reached, a mile and a half beyond the former village. Burnbanks, near the extremity of the lake, has furnished a station for our outline sketch. The wild wood of Naddle Forest beautifully feathers the steeps of the east shore. Rather more than a mile from the foot of the lake, Fordendale brook is crossed near a few houses, called Measand Becks, behind which the brook makes some pretty falls on the mountain side. A broad promontory of rich meadow land enters the lake at this place, and approaching within two or three hundred yards of the other margin, divides the lake into two unequal portions. The craggy eminence hanging over the opposite shore is Wallow Crag, within whose ponderous jaws the common people believe that the once errant spirit "of Jamie Lowther" (the first Earl of Lonsdale) is securely inurned. He was a man universally dreaded, from his stern demeanour, and his despotic use of great local power. After his death it was confidently stated that his ghost roamed about these vales, to the terror of all his Majesty's well-disposed subjects, until some worthy priest, skilled in the management of refractory apparitions, safely "laid" him, with the aid of divers exorcisms and approved charms, in the centre of this rock. The only boats upon the lake belong to Lord Lonsdale; but if application be made to his Lordship's gamekeeper, who lives by the roadside, about a mile from the foot of the mere, he will, if not otherwise engaged, cheerfully accommodate the stranger with his personal services. The principal feeder flows from Blea Water and Small Water, two tarns lying under High Street, whose lofty summit, with its dependent ridges and protuberances, forms the greater part of the magnificent mountain range at the head of the lake. Looking upwards, either from the surface of the lake, or from the road, three several ridges are seen connecting the valley with the elevated summits on the right. First, Lathel, on the north of the coom called Whelter Bottom, then Castle Hill and Whelter Crag pushing up to Kidsty Pike; and lastly, Long Stile, which joins High Street. The conical top of Hill Bell may be perceived beyond; and as the head is approached, Harter Fell takes his determined stand in front. Char, trout, skellies, and perch abound in Hawes Water. The little chapel of Mardale stands close to the road about a mile above the lake, and over against it is a neat white house, called Chapel Hill, the residence of a yeoman named Holme. The ancestor of this family came originally from Stockholm, and landed in England in the train of the Conqueror. He was rewarded with an estate in Northamptonshire, where the family were seated until the reign of King John, at which period, its head flying from his enemies, concealed himself in a cavity (to this day called Hugh's Cave), at the foot of Riggendale Crag, barely half a mile from the estate where his descendant resides, and which was purchased by the fugitive. Udolphus Holm, one of the family, founded an oratory or house of prayer near his habitation, from which this place took the name of Chapel Hill. Having wound round a rocky screen, a few houses, termed collectively Mardale Green (amongst which there is a small inn), are seen thinly sown over the floor of a little verdant plain. Harter Fell closes in this level area on the south-lofty mountains rise on the east and west; whilst on the north there is the rocky partition above mentioned, contributing to make this as perfect a solitude as can well be conceived. The pedestrian will find a road over the pass of Gatescarth, which reaches Kendal by the vale of Longsleddale, fifteen miles from Mardale Green (page 29). From Mardale the rambler might ascend High Street, and descend into Troutbeck; or cross the Martindale Fells direct to Patterdale, at the head of Ulleswater; or, by scrambling over the pass called Nan Bield, between Harter Fell and High Street, descend into Kentmere. WALK FROM LOWTHER VALE TO PATTERDALE. The pedestrian, to whom the frequented side of Ulleswater is familiar, will like to know that he may make an agreeable ramble across the fells separating the vale of Lowther from that lake, and then pursue his way to Patterdale by its east shore. From Askham he will go on to Helton, and there take a road up the hill side which enters the common near a farm house, called Helton Head. He must strike across the open moor in a south-westerly direction, and when he arrives at the ridge, he will have a splendid view of the whole Skiddaw range from Dodd Fell to High Pike, with the two Mell Fells in front. The Helvellyn and Fairfield ranges are also in view. Let him keep along the ridge until he approaches within a short distance of Lade Pot, and then let him from his birdlike station admire the Martindale Glens that run up from Ulleswater before he descends into the nearest, Fusedale. If the proper place be chosen (and he will find it difficult to descend at any other than the spot to which we allude), a green path winding through a recess will conduct him to Mellguards, a farm house not far from How Town, where there is a small public house. A road crosses a ridge behind Hallin Fell to Sandwike, whence he has the choice of two routes to Patterdale. One is a cart track up Boredale, the other is a foot-road of the roughest description, along the margin of Ulleswater, underneath Birk Fell and Place Fell. The views along this path are very beautiful. From one broad rock K |