*

farm-house at the foot of the Pikes, where refreshment is usually taken, is soon reached. Here a guide to Dungeon Gill Force, and to the summit of the Pikes, can be obtained. The former is a fall of water, formed by a stream which runs down a fissure in the face of the first great buttress of the Pikes, twenty minutes' climb from the vale. A natural arch has been made by two large stones having rolled from a higher part of the mountain, and got wedged in between the cheeks of rock. Over the bridge thus formed, ladies, as well as Wordsworth's "Idle Shepherd Boy," have had the intrepidity to pass, notwithstanding a black gulf on either hand is apt to unsteady the nerves. By a little scrambling over the rocks in the bed of the stream, the visitor may stand in the last and finest chamber, underneath the arch and in front of the waterfall. The stream from Stickle Tarn makes several pretty leaps in descending the hill side. Two roads traverse the valley of Great Langdale, one of which keeps under the hills on the left, the other takes the middle of the vale;the former is to be preferred by those unencumbered with carriages. One mile and a half from Mill Beck, is the little chapel of Langdale, whence a road, three miles in length, strikes up the hill side, and crossing

"There is a spot which you may see
If ever you to Langdale go.

Into a chasm, a mighty block

Hath fall'n, and make a bridge of rock :
The gulf is deep below,

And in a basin, black and small,

Receives a lofty Waterfall."

WORDSWORTH.

"In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair,
And Dungeon Ghyll so foully rent,
With rope of rocks and bells of air
Three sinful sexton's ghosts are pent,
Who all give back one after t'other,
The death-note to their living brother;
And oft, too, by their knell offended,
Just as their one! two! three! is ended,
The devil mocks their doleful tale
With a merry peal from Borrodaile."

COLERIDGE.

Red Bank, descends into Grasmere. In the vicinity of the Chapel, is Thrang Slate Quarry, a stupendous excavation. Continuing our march direct to Ambleside, the large sheet of water which now comes into sight, is Elterwater Tarn, and at the head of it stands Elterwater Hall. The stream feeding the tarn is crossed by a bridge, a short distance above the tarn. Near the bridge are the works of the Elterwater Gunpowder Company. A little further, in a recess on the flank of Loughrigg Fell, is Loughrigg Tarn, a lovely spot, on which Wilson has composed some beautiful lines.

Pedestrians occasionally prefer to reach Keswick by the STAKE PASS instead of by the high road. Milbeck under Langdale Pikes, is seven miles and a half from Ambleside; thence through Mickleden, Bowfell being on the left, to the top of the Stake, is four miles and a half; and Rosthwaite in Borrowdale, is five miles further. The whole distance from Ambleside to Keswick by this route is twenty-three miles. It may not be amiss to observe that there is no public-house between the one near Langdale Chapel and Rosthwaite.

RYDAL, GRASMERE, EASDALE, AND

THIRLEMERE.

THE Village of RYDAL is placed in a narrow gorge, formed by the advance of Loughrigg Fell and Rydal Knab, near the lower extremity of Rydal Mere, one mile and a quarter from Ambleside. Here, in the midst of a park containing great numbers of noble forest trees,* stands

* “ The sylvan, or say rather the forest scenery of Rydal Park, was, in the memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasure of old trees. By all means wander away into those old woods, and lose yourselves for an hour or two among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startled blackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless glow-worm among the last year's red beech-leaves. No very great harm should you even fall asleep under the shadow of an oak, while the magpie chatters at safe distance, and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of the canopy, and then hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of the loftiest umbrage."-PROFESSOR WILSON.

Rydal Hall, the seat of Lady le Fleming. The ancestor of the Flemings came to England, out of Flanders, with the Conqueror, and obtained large grants of land in Lancashire north of the Sands. Gleaston Castle, in Furness, and Coniston Hall, were residences of the family before they settled at Rydal. The celebrated WATERFALLS are within the park; and strangers desirous to view them must take a conductor from one of the cottages near the park gates. The fall below the house is beheld from the window of an old summer-house. 66 Here," says Mason, the biographer of Gray, in one of the most perfect pictures that words ever drew, "nature has performed every thing in little, which she usually executes on her larger scale; and, on that account, like the miniaturepainter, seems to have finished every part of it in a studied manner; not a little fragment of rock thrown into the basin, not a single stem of brushwood that starts from its craggy sides, but has its picturesque meaning; and the little central stream, dashing down a cleft of the darkest-coloured stone, produces an effect of light and shadow beautiful beyond description. This little theatrical scene might be painted as large as the original, on a canvas not bigger than those usually dropped in the Opera-house." Amongst the juvenile poems of Wordsworth, also, there is a sketch of this cascade:

"While thick above the rill the branches close,
In rocky basin its wild waves repose,

Inverted shrubs, and moss of gloomy green,

Cling from the rocks with pale wood-weeds between;
Save that aloft the subtle sunbeams shine

On wither'd briars, that o'er the crags recline,

Sole light admitted there, a small cascade

Illumes with sparkling foam the impervious shade;
Beyond, along the vista of the brook,

Where antique roots its bristling course o'erlook,
The eye reposes on a secret bridge,

Half grey, half shagg'd with ivy to its ridge."

The Chapel, from its prominent position, arrests the stranger's notice the moment he arrives at the village. It was erected at the expense of Lady le Fleming in

1824. Wordsworth addressed some verses to her ladyship on seeing the foundation preparing for its erection, from which these lines are taken :

"O Lady! from a noble line

Of Chieftains sprung, who stoutly bore
The spear, yet gave to works divine
A bounteous help in days of yore,
Thee kindred aspirations moved
To build, within a vale beloved,
For Him, upon whose high behests
All peace depends, all safety rests.
How fondly will the woods embrace
This daughter of thy pious care,
Lifting her front, with modest grace,
To make a fair recess more fair;
And to exalt the passing hour,
Or soothe it with a healing power,
Drawn from the Sacrifice fulfill'd,
Before this rugged soil was till'd;
Or human habitation rose
To interrupt the deep repose.
Well may the villagers rejoice!
Nor heat, nor cold, nor weary ways,
Will be a hindrance to the voice

That would unite in prayer and praise;
More duly shall wild wandering youth
Receive the curb of sacred truth;
Shall tottering age, bent earthward, hear
The Promise, with uplifted ear;
And all shall welcome the new ray
Imparted to their Sabbath day.
Nor deem the Poet's hope misplaced,
His fancy cheated-that can see
A shade upon the future cast,
Of Time's pathetic sanctity;

Can hear the monitory clock

Sound o'er the lake, with gentle shock,
At evening, when the ground beneath
Is ruffled o'er with cells of death,
Where happy generations lie
Here tutor❜d for eternity.

Rydal Mount, the residence of Wordsworth, the late Poet-Laureate, stands on a projection of the hill called Nab Scar, and is approached by the road leading to the Hall. It is, as Mrs. Hemans in one of her letters describes it, "a lovely cottage-like building, almost hidden by a profusion of roses and ivy." The grounds, laid out in a great measure by the hands of the poet himself,

though but of circumscribed dimensions, are so artfully whilst seeming to be so artlessly planned, as to appear of considerable extent. From a grassy mound in front, "commanding a view always so rich, and sometimes so brightly solemn, that one can well imagine its influence traceable in many of the poet's writings, you catch a gleam of Windermere over the grove tops-close at hand are Rydal Hall, and its ancient woods-right opposite the Loughrigg Fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, and to the right Rydal Mere, scarcely seen through embowering trees, whilst just below, the chapel lifts up its little tower." The poet's abode has been so prettily and correctly sketched in verse by Miss Jewsbury, that we

*We shall make no apology, because we are sure none will be required, for introducing, in this place, the following passage, relative to the illustrious poet, from an essay by that eloquent writer Thomas De Quincey:

"It must rejoice every man who joins in the homage offered to Wordsworth's powers (and what man is to be found who more or less does not?) to hear, with respect to one so lavishly endowed by nature, that he has not been neglected by fortune; that he has never had the finer edge of his sensibilities dulled by the sad anxieties, the degrading fears, the miserable dependencies of debt; that he has been blest with competency, even when poorest; has had hope and cheerful prospects in reversion through every stage of his life; that at all times he has been liberated from reasonable anxieties about the final interests of his children; that at all times he has been blessed with leisure, the very amplest that man ever enjoyed, for intellectual pursuits the most delightful; yes, that even for those delicate and coy pursuits, he has possessed, in combination, all the conditions for their most perfect culture-the leisure-the ease the solitude-the society -the domestic peace-the local scenery-Paradise for his eye, in Miltonic beauty, lying outside his windows-Paradise for his heart, in the perpetual happiness of his own fireside; and finally, when increasing years might be supposed to demand something more of modern luxuries, and expanding intercourse with society, in its most polished forms, something more of refined elegancies, that his means, still keeping pace in almost arithmetical ratio with his wants, had shed the graces of art upon the failing powers of nature, had stripped infirmity of discomfort, and (so far as the necessities of things will allow) had placed the final stages of life by means of many compensations, by universal praise, by plaudits, reverberated from senates, benedictions wherever his poems have penetrated, honour, troops of friends-in short, by all that miraculous prosperity can do to evade the primal decrees of nature-had placed the final stages upon a level with the first. This report of Wordsworth's success will rejoice thousands of hearts."