july 16th.—on saturday, we left newby bridge, and came by steamboat up windermere lake to lowwood hotel, where we now are. the foot of the lake is just above newby bridge, and it widens from that point, but never to such a breadth that objects are not pretty distinctly visible from shore to shore. the steamer stops at two or three places in the course of its voyage, the principal one being bowness, which has a little bustle and air of business about it proper to the principal port of the lake. there are several small yachts, and many skiffs rowing about. the banks are everywhere beautiful, and the water, in one portion, is strewn with islands; few of which are large enough to be inhabitable, but they all seem to be appropriated, and kept in the neatest order. as yet, i have seen no wildness; everything is perfectly subdued and polished and imbued with human taste, except, indeed, the outlines of the hills, which continue very much the same as god made them. as we approached the head of the lake, the congregation of great hills in the distance became very striking. the shapes of these english mountains are certainly far more picturesque than those which i have seen in eastern america, where their summits are almost invariably rounded, as i remember them. they are great hillocks, great bunches of earth, similar to one another in their developments. here they have variety of shape, rising into peaks, falling in abrupt precipices, stretching along in zigzag outlines, and thus making the most of their not very gigantic masses, and producing a remarkable effect.

we arrived at the lowwood hotel, which is very near the head of the lake, not long after two o'clock. it stands almost on the shore of windermere, with only a green lawn between,—an extensive hotel, covering a good deal of ground; but low, and rather village-inn-like than lofty. we found the house so crowded as to afford us no very comfortable accommodations, either as to parlor or sleeping-rooms, and we find nothing like the home-feeling into which we at once settled down at newby bridge. there is a very pretty vicinity, and a fine view of mountains to the northwest, sitting together in a family group, sometimes in full sunshine, sometimes with only a golden gleam on one or two of them, sometimes all in a veil of cloud, from which here and there a great, dusky head raises itself, while you are looking at a dim obscurity. nearer, there are high, green slopes, well wooded, but with such decent and well-behaved wood as you perceive has grown up under the care of man; still no wildness, no ruggedness,—as how should there be, when, every half-mile or so, a porter's lodge or a gentleman's gateway indicates that the whole region is used up for villas. on the opposite shore of the lake there is a mimic castle, which i suppose i might have mistaken for a real one two years ago. it is a great, foolish toy of gray stone.

a steamboat comes to the pier as many as six times a day, and stage-coaches and omnibuses stop at the door still oftener, communicating with ambleside and the town of windermere, and with the railway, which opens london and all the world to us. we get no knowledge of our fellow-guests, all of whom, like ourselves, live in their own circles, and are just as remote from us as if the lake lay between. the only words i have spoken since arriving here have been to my own family or to a waiter, save to one or two young pedestrians who met me on a walk, and asked me the distance to lowwood hotel. "just beyond here," said i, and i might stay for months without occasion to speak again.

yesterday forenoon j——- and i walked to ambleside,—distant barely two miles. it is a little town, chiefly of modern aspect, built on a very uneven hillside, and with very irregular streets and lanes, which bewilder the stranger as much as those of a larger city. many of the houses look old, and are probably the cottages and farm-houses which composed the rude village a century ago; but there are stuccoed shops and dwellings, such as may have been built within a year or two; and three hotels, one of which has the look of a good old village inn; and the others are fashionable or commercial establishments. through the midst of the village comes tumbling and rumbling a mountain streamlet, rushing through a deep, rocky dell, gliding under an old stone inch, and turning, when occasion calls, the great block of a water-mill. this is the only very striking feature of the village,—the stream taking its rough pathway to the lake as it used to do before the poets had made this region fashionable.

in the evening, just before eight o'clock, i took a walk alone, by a road which goes up the hill, back of our hotel, and which i supposed might be the road to the town of windermere. but it went up higher and higher, and for the mile or two that it led me along, winding up, i saw no traces of a town; but at last it turned into a valley between two high ridges, leading quite away from the lake, within view of which the town of windermere is situated. it was a very lonely road, though as smooth, hard, and well kept as any thoroughfare in the suburbs of a city; hardly a dwelling on either side, except one, half barn, half farm-house, and one gentleman's gateway, near the beginning of the road, and another more than a mile above. at, two or three points there were stone barns, which are here built with great solidity. at one place there was a painted board, announcing that a field of five acres was to be sold, and referring those desirous of purchasing to a solicitor in london. the lake country is but a london suburb. nevertheless, the walk was lonely and lovely; the copses and the broad hillside, the glimpses of the lake, the great misty company of pikes and fells, beguiled me into a sense of something like solitude; and the bleating of the sheep, remote and near, had a like tendency. gaining the summit of the hill, i had the best view of windermere which i have yet attained,—the best, i should think, that can be had, though, being towards the south, it brings the softer instead of the more striking features of the landscape into view. but it shows nearly the whole extent of the lake, all the way from lowwood, beyond newby bridge, and i think there can hardly be anything more beautiful in the world. the water was like a strip and gleam of sky, fitly set among lovely slopes of earth. it was no broader than many a river, and yet you saw at once that it could be no river, its outline being so different from that of a running stream, not straight nor winding, but stretching to one side or the other, as the shores made room for it.

this morning it is raining, and we are not very comfortable nor contented, being all confined to our little parlor, which has a broken window, against which i have pinned the times to keep out the chill damp air. u—— has been ill, in consequence of having been overheated at newby bridge. we have no books, except guide-books, no means of amusement, nothing to do. there are no newspapers, and i shall remember lowwood not very agreeably. as far as we are concerned, it is a scrambling, ill-ordered hotel, with insufficient attendance, wretched sleeping-accommodations, a pretty fair table, but german-silver forks and spoons; our food does not taste very good, and yet there is really no definite fault to be found with it.

since writing the above, i have found the first volume of sir charles grandison, and two of g. p. r. james's works, in the coffee-room. the days pass heavily here, and leave behind them a sense of having answered no very good purpose. they are long enough, at all events, for the sun does not set till after eight o'clock, and rises i know not when. one of the most remarkable distinctions between england and the united states is the ignorance into which we fall of whatever is going on in the world the moment we get away from the great thoroughfares and centres of life. in leamington we heard no news from week's end to week's end, and knew not where to find a newspaper; and here the case is neither better nor worse. the rural people really seem to take no interest in public affairs; at all events, they have no intelligence on such subjects. it is possible that the cheap newspapers may, in time, find their way into the cottages, or, at least, into the country taverns; but it is not at all so now. if they generally know that sebastopol is besieged, it is the extent of their knowledge. the public life of america is lived through the mind and heart of every man in it; here the people feel that they have nothing to do with what is going forward, and, i suspect, care little or nothing about it. such things they permit to be the exclusive concern of the higher classes.

in front of our hotel, on the lawn between us and the lake, there are two trees, which we have hitherto taken to be yews; but on examining them more closely, i find that they are pine-trees, and quite dead and dry, although they have the aspect of dark rich life. but this is caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines, which have twisted round them like gigantic snakes, and, clambering up and throttling the life out of them, have put out branches, and made crowns of thick green leaves, so that, at a little distance, it is quite impossible not to take them for genuine trees. the trunks of the ivy-vines must be more than a foot in circumference, and one feels they have stolen the life that belonged to the pines. the dead branches of one of the pines stick out horizontally through the ivy-boughs. the other shows nothing but the ivy, and in shape a good deal resembles a poplar. when the pine trunks shall have quite crumbled away, the ivy-stems will doubtless have gained sufficient strength to sustain themselves independently.

july 19th.—yesterday s——- went down the lake in the steamboat to take u——, baby, and nurse to newby bridge, while the three rest of us should make a tour through the lake region. after mamma's departure, and when i had finished some letters, j——- and i set out on a walk, which finally brought us to bowness, through much delightful shade of woods, and past beautiful rivulets or brooklets, and up and down many hills. this chief harbor of the lakes seemed alive and bustling with tourists, it being a sunny and pleasant day, so that they were all abroad, like summer insects. the town is a confused and irregular little place, of very uneven surface. there is an old church in it, and two or three large hotels. we stayed there perhaps half an hour, and then went to the pier, where shortly a steamer arrived, with music sounding,—on the deck of which, with her back to us, sat a lady in a gray travelling-dress. j——- cried out, "mamma! mamma!" to which the lady deigned no notice, but, he repeating it, she turned round, and was as much surprised, no doubt, to see her husband and son, as if this little lake had been the great ocean, and we meeting each other from opposite shores of it. we soon steamed back to lowwood, and took a car thence for rydal and grasmere, after a cold luncheon. at bowness i met miss charlotte cushman, who has been staying at the lowwood hotel with us since monday, without either party being aware of it.

our road to rydal lay through ambleside, which is certainly a very pretty town, and looks cheerfully in a sunny day. we saw miss martineau's residence, called "the knoll," standing high up on a hillock, and having at its foot a methodist chapel, for which, or whatever place of christian worship, this good lady can have no occasion. we stopped a moment in the street below her house, and deliberated a little whether to call on her; but concluded we would not.

after leaving ambleside, the road winds in and out among the hills, and soon brings us to a sheet (or napkin, rather than a sheet) of water, which the driver tells us is rydal lake! we had already heard that it was but three quarters of a mile long, and one quarter broad; still, it being an idea of considerable size in our minds, we had inevitably drawn its ideal, physical proportions on a somewhat corresponding scale. it certainly did look very small; and i said, in my american scorn, that i could carry it away easily in a porringer; for it is nothing more than a grass-bordered pool among the surrounding hills which ascend directly from its margin; so that one might fancy it, not, a permanent body of water, but a rather extensive accumulation of recent rain. moreover, it was rippled with a breeze, and so, as i remember it, though the sun shone, it looked dull and sulky, like a child out of humor. now, the best thing these small ponds can do is to keep perfectly calm and smooth, and not attempt to show off any airs of their own, but content themselves with serving as a mirror for whatever of beautiful or picturesque there may be in the scenery around them. the hills about rydal water are not very lofty, but are sufficiently so as objects of every-day view,— objects to live with; and they are craggier than those we have hitherto seen, and bare of wood, which indeed would hardly grow on some of their precipitous sides.

on the roadside, as we reach the foot of the lake, stands a spruce and rather large house of modern aspect, but with several gables and much overgrown with ivy,—a very pretty and comfortable house, built, adorned, and cared for with commendable taste. we inquired whose it was, and the coachman said it was "mr. wordsworth's," and that "mrs. wordsworth was still residing there." so we were much delighted to have seen his abode, and as we were to stay the night at grasmere, about two miles farther on, we determined to come back and inspect it as particularly as should be allowable. accordingly, after taking rooms at brown's hotel, we drove back in our return car, and, reaching the head of rydal water, alighted to walk through this familiar scene of so many years of wordsworth's life. we ought to have seen de quincey's former residence and hartley coleridge's cottage, i believe, on our way, but were not aware of it at the time. near the lake there is a stone-quarry, and a cavern of some extent, artificially formed, probably by taking out the stone. above the shore of the lake, not a great way from wordsworth's residence, there is a flight of steps hewn in a rock and ascending to a rock seat where a good view of the lake may be attained; and, as wordsworth has doubtless sat there hundreds of times, so did we ascend and sit down, and look at the hills and at the flags on the lake's shore.

reaching the house that had been pointed out to us as wordsworth's residence, we began to peer about at its front and gables, and over the garden wall, on both sides of the road, quickening our enthusiasm as much as we could, and meditating to pilfer some flower or ivy-leaf from the house or its vicinity, to be kept as sacred memorials. at this juncture a man approached, who announced himself as the gardener of the place, and said, too, that this was not wordsworth's house at all, but the residence of mr. ball, a quaker gentleman; but that his ground adjoined wordsworth's, and that he had liberty to take visitors through the latter. how absurd it would have been if we had carried away ivy-leaves and tender recollections from this domicile of a respectable quaker! the gardener was an intelligent man, of pleasant, sociable, and respectful address; and as we went along he talked about the poet, whom he had known, and who, he said, was very familiar with the country people. he led us through mr. ball's grounds, up a steep hillside, by winding, gravelled walks, with summer-houses at points favorable for them. it was a very shady and pleasant spot, containing about an acre of ground, and all turned to good account by the manner of laying it out; so that it seemed more than it really is. in one place, on a small, smooth slab of slate, let into a rock, there is an inscription by wordsworth, which i think i have read in his works, claiming kindly regards from those who visit the spot after his departure, because many trees had been spared at his intercession. his own grounds, or rather his ornamental garden, is separated from mr. ball's only by a wire fence, or some such barrier, and the gates have no fastening, so that the whole appears like one possession, and doubtless was so as regarded the poet's walks and enjoyments. we approached by paths so winding that i hardly know how the house stands in relation to the road; but, after much circuity, we really did see wordsworth's residence,—an old house with an uneven ridge-pole, built of stone, no doubt, but plastered over with some neutral tint,—a house that would not have been remarkably pretty in itself, but so delightfully situated, so secluded, so hedged about with shrubbery, and adorned with flowers, so ivy-grown on one side, so beautified with the personal care of him who lived in it and loved it, that it seemed the very place for a poet's residence; and as if, while he lived so long in it, his poetry had manifested itself in flowers, shrubbery, and ivy. i never smelt such a delightful fragrance of flowers as there was all through the garden. in front of the house there is a circular terrace of two ascents, in raising which wordsworth had himself performed much of the labor; and here there are seats, from which we obtained a fine view down the valley of the rothay, with windermere in the distance,—a view of several miles, and which we did not suppose could be seen, after winding among the hills so far from the lake. it is very beautiful and picture-like. while we sat here, s——- happened to refer to the ballad of little barbara lewthwaite, and j——- began to repeat the poem concerning her, and the gardener said that "little barbara" had died not a great while ago, an elderly woman, leaving grown-up children behind her. her marriage-name was thompson, and the gardener believed there was nothing remarkable in her character.

there is a summer-house at one extremity of the grounds, in deepest shadow, but with glimpses of mountain views through trees which shut it in, and which have spread intercepting boughs since wordsworth died. it is lined with pine-cones, in a pretty way enough, but of doubtful taste. i rather wonder that people of real taste should help nature out, and beautify her, or perhaps rather prettify her so much as they do,—opening vistas, showing one thing, hiding another, making a scene picturesque, whether or no. i cannot rid myself of the feeling that there is something false—a kind of humbug—in all this. at any rate, the traces of it do not contribute to my enjoyment, and, indeed, it ought to be done so exquisitely as to leave no trace. but i ought not to criticise in any way a spot which gave me so much pleasure, and where it is good to think of wordsworth in quiet, past days, walking in his home-shadow of trees which he knew, and training flowers, and trimming shrubs, and chanting in an undertone his own verses up and down the winding walks.

the gardener gave j——- a cone from the summer-house, which had fallen on the seat, and s——- got some mignonette, and leaves of laurel and ivy, and we wended our way back to the hotel. wordsworth was not the owner of this house; it being the property of lady fleming. mrs. wordsworth still lives there, and is now at home.

five o'clock.—-all day it has been cloudy and showery, with thunder now and then; the mists hang low on the surrounding hills, adown which, at various points, we can see the snow-white fall of little streamlets ("forces" they call them here) swollen by the rain. an overcast day is not so gloomy in the hill-country as in the lowlands; there are more breaks, more transfusion of skylight through the gloom, as has been the case to-day, and as i found in lenox; we get better acquainted with clouds by seeing at what height they be on the hillsides, and find that the difference betwixt a fair day and a cloudy and rainy one is very superficial, after all. nevertheless, rain is rain, and wets a man just as much among the mountains as anywhere else; so we have been kept within doors all day, till an hour or so ago, when j——- and i went down to the village in quest of the post-office.

we took a path that leads from the hotel across the fields, and, coming into a wood, crosses the rothay by a one-arched bridge and passes the village church. the rothay is very swift and turbulent to-day, and hurries along with foam-specks on its surface, filling its banks from brim to brim,—a stream perhaps twenty feet wide, perhaps more; for i am willing that the good little river should have all it can fairly claim. it is the st. lawrence of several of these english lakes, through which it flows, and carries off their superfluous waters. in its haste, and with its rushing sound, it was pleasant both to see and hear; and it sweeps by one side of the old churchyard where wordsworth lies buried,—- the side where his grave is made. the church of grasmere is a very plain structure, with a low body, on one side of which is a small porch with a pointed arch. the tower is square and looks ancient; but the whole is overlaid with plaster of a buff or pale yellow hue. it was originally built, i suppose, of rough shingly stones, as many of the houses hereabouts are now, and, like many of them, the plaster is used to give a finish. we found the gate of the churchyard wide open; and the grass was lying on the graves, having probably been mowed yesterday. it is but a small churchyard, and with few monuments of any pretension in it, most of them being slate headstones, standing erect. from the gate at which we entered, a distinct foot-track leads to the corner nearest the riverside, and i turned into it by a sort of instinct, the more readily as i saw a tourist-looking man approaching from that point, and a woman looking among the gravestones. both of these persons had gone by the time i came up, so that j——- and i were left to find wordsworth's grave all by ourselves.

at this corner of the churchyard there is a hawthorn bush or tree, the extremest branches of which stretch as far as where wordsworth lies. this whole corner seems to be devoted to himself and his family and friends; and they all lie very closely together, side by side, and head to foot, as room could conveniently be found. hartley coleridge lies a little behind, in the direction of the church, his feet being towards wordsworth's head, who lies in the row of those of his own blood. i found out hartley coleridge's grave sooner than wordsworth's; for it is of marble, and, though simple enough, has more of sculptured device about it, having been erected, as i think the inscription states, by his brother and sister. wordsworth has only the very simplest slab of slate, with "william wordsworth" and nothing else upon it. as i recollect it, it is the midmost grave of the row. it is or has been well grass-grown, but the grass is quite worn away from the top, though sufficiently luxuriant at the sides. it looks as if people had stood upon it, and so does the grave next to it, which i believe is one of his children. i plucked some grass and weeds from it, and as he was buried within so few years they may fairly be supposed to have drawn their nutriment from his mortal remains, and i gathered them from just above his head. there is no fault to be found with his grave,—within view of the hills, within sound of the river, murmuring near by,—no fault except that he is crowded so closely with his kindred; and, moreover, that, being so old a churchyard, the earth over him must all have been human once. he might have had fresh earth to himself; but he chose this grave deliberately. no very stately and broad-based monument can ever be erected over it without infringing upon, covering, and overshadowing the graves, not only of his family, but of individuals who probably were quite disconnected with him. but it is pleasant to think and know—were it but on the evidence of this choice of a resting-place—that he did not care for a stately monument.

after leaving the churchyard, we wandered about in quest of the post-office, and for a long time without success. this little town of grasmere seems to me as pretty a place as ever i met with in my life. it is quite shut in by hills that rise up immediately around it, like a neighborhood of kindly giants. these hills descend steeply to the verge of the level on which the village stands, and there they terminate at once, the whole site of the little town being as even as a floor. i call it a village; but it is no village at all,—all the dwellings standing apart, each in its own little domain, and each, i believe, with its own little lane leading to it, independently of the rest. most of these are old cottages, plastered white, with antique porches, and roses and other vines trained against them, and shrubbery growing about them; and some are covered with ivy. there are a few edifices of more pretension and of modern build, but not so strikingly so as to put the rest out of countenance. the post-office, when we found it, proved to be an ivied cottage, with a good deal of shrubbery round it, having its own pathway, like the other cottages. the whole looks like a real seclusion, shut out from the great world by these encircling hills, on the sides of which, whenever they are not too steep, you see the division lines of property, and tokens of cultivation,—taking from them their pretensions to savage majesty, but bringing them nearer to the heart of man.

since writing the above, i have been again with s——- to see wordsworth's grave, and, finding the door of the church open, we went in. a woman and little girl were sweeping at the farther end, and the woman came towards us out of the cloud of dust which she had raised. we were surprised at the extremely antique appearance of the church. it is paved with bluish-gray flagstones, over which uncounted generations have trodden, leaving the floor as well laid as ever. the walls are very thick, and the arched windows open through them at a considerable distance above the floor. there is no middle aisle; but first a row of pews next either wall, and then an aisle on each side of the pews, occupying the centre of the church,—then, two side aisles, but no middle one. and down through the centre or the church runs a row of five arches, very rude and round-headed, all of rough stone, supported by rough and massive pillars, or rather square, stone blocks, which stand in the pews, and stood in the same places probably, long before the wood of those pews began to grow. above this row of arches is another row, built upon the same mass of stone, and almost as broad, but lower; and on this upper row rests the framework, the oaken beams, the black skeleton of the roof. it is a very clumsy contrivance for supporting the roof, and if it were modern, we certainly should condemn it as very ugly; but being the relic of a simple age it comes in well with the antique simplicity of the whole structure. the roof goes up, barn-like, into its natural angle, and all the rafters and cross-beams are visible. there is an old font; and in the chancel is a niche, where (judging from a similar one in furness abbey) the holy water used to be placed for the priest's use while celebrating mass. around the inside of the porch is a stone bench, against the wall, narrow and uneasy, but where a great many people had sat, who now have found quieter resting-places.

the woman was a very intelligent-looking person, not of the usual english ruddiness, but rather thin and somewhat pale, though bright, of aspect. her way of talking was very agreeable. she inquired if we wished to see wordsworth's monument, and at once showed it to us,—a slab of white marble fixed against the upper end of the central row of stone arches, with a pretty long inscription, and a profile bust, in bas-relief, of his aged countenance. the monument, is placed directly over wordsworth's pew, and could best be seen and read from the very corner seat where he used to sit. the pew is one of those occupying the centre of the church, and is just across the aisle from the pulpit, and is the best of all for the purpose of seeing and hearing the clergyman, and likewise as convenient as any, from its neighborhood to the altar. on the other side of the aisle, beneath the pulpit, is lady fleming's pew. this and one or two others are curtained, wordsworth's was not. i think i can bring up his image in that corner seat of his pew—a white-headed, tall, spare man, plain in aspect—better than in any other situation. the woman said that she had known him very well, and that he had made some verses on a sister of hers. she repeated the first lines, something about a lamb, but neither s——- nor i remembered them.

on the walls of the chancel there are monuments to the flemings, and painted escutcheons of their arms; and along the side walls also, and on the square pillars of the row of arches, there are other monuments, generally of white marble, with the letters of the inscription blackened. on these pillars, likewise, and in many places in the walls, were hung verses from scripture, painted on boards. at one of the doors was a poor-box,—an elaborately carved little box, of oak, with the date 1648, and the name of the church—st. oswald's—upon it. the whole interior of the edifice was plain, simple, almost to grimness,—or would have been so, only that the foolish church-wardens, or other authority, have washed it over with the same buff color with which they have overlaid the exterior. it is a pity; it lightens it up, and desecrates it greatly, especially as the woman says that there were formerly paintings on the walls, now obliterated forever. i could have stayed in the old church much longer, and could write much more about it, but there must be an end to everything. pacing it from the farther end to the elevation before the altar, i found that it was twenty-five paces long.

on looking again at the rothay, i find i did it some injustice; for at the bridge, in its present swollen state, it is nearer twenty yards than twenty feet across. its waters are very clear, and it rushes along with a speed which is delightful to see, after an acquaintance with the muddy and sluggish avon and leam.

since tea i have taken a stroll from the hotel in a different direction from heretofore, and passed the swan inn, where scott used to go daily to get a draught of liquor, when he was visiting wordsworth, who had no wine nor other inspiriting fluid in his house. it stands directly on the wayside,—a small, whitewashed house, with an addition in the rear that seems to have been built since scott's time. on the door is the painted sign of a swan, and the name "scott's swan hotel." i walked a considerable distance beyond it, but, a shower cooling up, i turned back, entered the inn, and, following the mistress into a snug little room, was served with a glass of bitter ale. it is a very plain and homely inn, and certainly could not have satisfied scott's wants if he had required anything very far-fetched or delicate in his potations. i found two westmoreland peasants in the room, with ale before them. one went away almost immediately; but the other remained, and, entering into conversation with him, he told me that he was going to new zealand, and expected to sail in september. i announced myself as an american, and he said that a large party had lately gone from hereabouts to america; but he seemed not to understand that there was any distinction between canada and the states. these people had gone to quebec. he was a very civil, well-behaved, kindly sort of person, of a simple character, which i took to belong to the class and locality, rather than to himself individually. i could not very well understand all that he said, owing to his provincial dialect; and when he spoke to his own countrymen, or to the women of the house, i really could but just catch a word here and there. how long it takes to melt english down into a homogeneous mass! he told me that there was a public library in grasmere to which he has access in common with the other inhabitants, and a reading-room connected with it, where he reads the times in the evening. there was no american smartness in his mind. when i left the house, it was showering briskly; but the drops quite ceased, and the clouds began to break away before i reached my hotel, and i saw the new moon over my right shoulder.

july 21st.—we left grasmere yesterday, after breakfast; it being a delightful morning, with some clouds, but the cheerfullest sunshine on great part of the mountainsides and on ourselves. we returned, in the first place, to ambleside, along the border of grasmere lake, which would be a pretty little piece of water, with its steep and high surrounding hills, were it not that a stubborn and straight-lined stone fence, running along the eastern shore, by the roadside, quite spoils its appearance. rydal water, though nothing can make a lake of it, looked prettier and less diminutive than at the first view; and, in fact, i find that it is impossible to know accurately how any prospect or other thing looks, until after at least a second view, which always essentially corrects the first. this, i think, is especially true in regard to objects which we have heard much about, and exercised our imagination upon; the first view being a vain attempt to reconcile our idea with the reality, and at the second we begin to accept the thing for what it really is. wordsworth's situation is really a beautiful one; and nab scaur behind his house rises with a grand, protecting air. we passed nab's cottage, in which de quincey formerly lived, and where hartley coleridge lived and died. it is a small, buff-tinted, plastered stone cottage, immediately on the roadside, and originally, i should think, of a very humble class; but it now looks as if persons of taste might some time or other have sat down in it, and caused flowers to spring up about it. it is very agreeably situated under the great, precipitous hill, and with rydal water close at band, on the other side of the road. an advertisement of lodgings to let was put up on this cottage.

i question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as england— this part of england, at least—on a fine summer morning. it makes one think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright universal verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered cottages,—not cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring poor; such nice villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for comfort and beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and after-thought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel as if their children might live in them also, and so they plant trees to overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against their walls, and thus live for the future in another sense than we americans do. and the climate helps them out, and makes everything moist, and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as human life and vegetable life is so apt to be with us. certainly, england can present a more attractive face than we can; even in its humbler modes of life, to say nothing of the beautiful lives that might be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose gateways, with broad, smooth gravelled drives leading through them, one sees every mile or two along the road, winding into some proud seclusion. all this is passing away, and society most assume new relations; but there is no harm in believing that there has been something very good in english life,— good for all classes while the world was in a state out of which these forms naturally grew.

passing through ambleside, our phaeton and pair turned towards ullswater, which we were to reach through the pass of kirkstone. this is some three or four miles from ambleside, and as we approached it the road kept ascending higher and higher, the hills grew more bare, and the country lost its soft and delightful verdure. at last the road became so steep that j——- and i alighted to walk. this is the aspiring road that wordsworth speaks of in his ode; it passes through the gorge of precipitous hills,—or almost precipitous,—too much so for even the grass to grow on many portions, which are covered with gray smugly stones; and i think this pass, in its middle part, must have looked just the same when the romans marched through it as it looks now. no trees could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the english climate can generate no available soil. i do not know that i have seen anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. the notch of the white mountains, as i remember it in my youthful days, is more wonderful and richly picturesque, but of quite a different character.

about the centre and at the highest point of the pass stands an old stone building of mean appearance, with the usual sign of an alehouse, "licensed to retail foreign spirits, ale, and tobacco," over the door, and another small sign, designating it as the highest inhabitable house in england. it is a chill and desolate place for a residence. they keep a visitor's book here, and we recorded our names in it, and were not too sorry to leave the mean little hovel, smelling as it did of tobacco-smoke, and possessing all other characteristics of the humblest alehouse on the level earth.

the kirkstone, which gives the pass its name, is not seen in approaching from ambleside, until some time after you begin to descend towards brothers' water. when the driver first pointed it out, a little way up the hill on our left, it looked no more than a bowlder of a ton or two in weight, among a hundred others nearly as big; and i saw hardly any resemblance to a church or church-spire, to which the fancies of past generations have likened it. as we descended the pass, however, and left the stone farther and farther behind, it continued to show itself, and assumed a more striking and prominent aspect, standing out clearly relieved against the sky, so that no traveller would fail to observe it, where there are so few defined objects to attract notice, amid the naked monotony of the stern hills; though, indeed, if i had taken it for any sort of an edifice, it would rather have been for a wayside inn or a shepherd's hut than for a church. we lost sight of it, and again beheld it more and more brought out against the sky, by the turns of the road, several times in the course of our descent. there is a very fine view of brothers' water, shut in by steep hills, as we go down kirkstone pass.

at about half past twelve we reached patterdale, at the foot of ullswater, and here took luncheon. the hotels are mostly very good all through this region, and this deserved that character. a black-coated waiter, of more gentlemanly appearance than most englishmen, yet taking a sixpence with as little scruple as a lawyer would take his fee; the mistress, in lady-like attire, receiving us at the door, and waiting upon us to the carriage-steps; clean, comely housemaids everywhere at hand,— all appliances, in short, for being comfortable, and comfortable, too, within one's own circle. and, on taking leave, everybody who has done anything for you, or who might by possibility have done anything, is to be feed. you pay the landlord enough, in all conscience; and then you pay all his servants, who have been your servants for the time. but, to say the truth, there is a degree of the same kind of annoyance in an american hotel, although it is not so much an acknowledged custom. here, in the houses where attendance is not charged in the bill, no wages are paid by the host to those servants—chambermaid, waiter, and boots—who come into immediate contact with travellers. the drivers of the cars, phaetons, and flys are likewise unpaid, except by their passengers, and claim threepence a mile with the same sense of right as their masters in charging for the vehicles and horses. when you come to understand this claim, not as an appeal to your generosity, but as an actual and necessary part of the cost of the journey, it is yielded to with a more comfortable feeling; and the traveller has really option enough, as to the amount which he will give, to insure civility and good behavior on the driver's part.

ullswater is a beautiful lake, with steep hills walling it about, so steep, on the eastern side, that there seems hardly room for a road to run along the base. we passed up the western shore, and turned off from it about midway, to take the road towards keswick. we stopped, however, at lyulph's tower, while our chariot went on up a hill, and took a guide to show us the way to airey force,—a small cataract, which is claimed as private property, and out of which, no doubt, a pretty little revenue is raised. i do not think that there can be any rightful appropriation, as private property, of objects of natural beauty. the fruits of the land, and whatever human labor can produce from it, belong fairly enough to the person who has a deed or a lease; but the beautiful is the property of him who can hive it and enjoy it. it is very unsatisfactory to think of a cataract under lock and key. however, we were shown to airey force by a tall and graceful mountain-maid, with a healthy cheek, and a step that had no possibility of weariness in it. the cascade is an irregular streak of foamy water, pouring adown a rude shadowy glen. i liked well enough to see it; but it is wearisome, on the whole, to go the rounds of what everybody thinks it necessary to see. it makes me a little ashamed. it is somewhat as if we were drinking out of the same glass, and eating from the same dish, as a multitude of other people.

within a few miles of keswick, we passed along at the foot of saddleback, and by the entrance of the vale of st. john, and down the valley, on one of the slopes, we saw the enchanted castle. thence we drove along by the course of the greta, and soon arrived at keswick, which lies at the base of skiddaw, and among a brotherhood of picturesque eminences, and is itself a compact little town, with a market-house, built of the old stones of the earl of derwentwater's ruined castle, standing in the centre,—the principal street forking into two as it passes it. we alighted at the king's arms, and went in search of southey's residence, which we found easily enough, as it lies just on the outskirts of the town. we inquired of a group of people, two of whom, i thought, did not seem to know much about the matter; but the third, an elderly man, pointed it out at once,—a house surrounded by trees, so as to be seen only partially, and standing on a little eminence, a hundred yards or so from the road.

we went up a private lane that led to the rear of the place, and so penetrated quite into the back-yard without meeting anybody,—passing a small kennel, in which were two hounds, who gazed at us, but neither growled nor wagged their tails. the house is three stories high, and seems to have a great deal of room in it, so as not to discredit its name, "greta hall,"—a very spacious dwelling for a poet. the windows were nearly all closed; there were no signs of occupancy, but a general air of neglect. s——-, who is bolder than i in these matters, ventured through what seemed a back garden gate, and i soon heard her in conversation with some man, who now presented himself, and proved to be a gardener. he said he had formerly acted in that capacity for southey, although a gardener had not been kept by him as a regular part of his establishment. this was an old man with an odd crookedness of legs, and strange, disjointed limp. s——- had told him that we were americans, and he took the idea that we had come this long distance, over sea and land, with the sole purpose of seeing southey's residence, so that he was inclined to do what he could towards exhibiting it. this was but little; the present occupant (a mr. radday, i believe the gardener called him) being away, and the house shut up.

but he showed us about the grounds, and allowed us to peep into the windows of what had been southey's library, and into those of another of the front apartments, and showed us the window of the chamber in the rear, in which southey died. the apartments into which we peeped looked rather small and low,—not particularly so, but enough to indicate an old building. they are now handsomely furnished, and we saw over one of the fireplaces an inscription about southey; and in the corner of the same room stood a suit, of bright armor. it is taller than the country-houses of english gentlemen usually are, and it is even stately. all about, in front, beside it and behind, there is a great profusion of trees, most of which were planted by southey, who came to live here more than fifty years ago, and they have, of course, grown much more shadowy now than he ever beheld them; for he died about fourteen years since. the grounds are well laid out, and neatly kept, with the usual lawn and gravelled walks, and quaint little devices in the ornamental way. these may be of later date than southey's time. the gardener spoke respectfully of southey, and of his first wife, and observed that "it was a great loss to the neighborhood when that family went down."

the house stands directly above the greta, the murmur of which is audible all about it; for the greta is a swift little river, and goes on its way with a continual sound, which has both depth and breadth. the gardener led us to a walk along its banks, close by the hall, where he said southey used to walk for hours and hours together. he might, indeed, get there from his study in a moment. there are two paths, one above the other, well laid out on the steep declivity of the high bank; and there is such a very thick shade of oaks and elms, planted by southey himself over the bank, that all the ground and grass were moist, although it had been a sunny day. it is a very sombre walk; not many glimpses of the sky through those dense boughs. the greta is here, perhaps, twenty yards across, and very dark of hue, and its voice is melancholy and very suggestive of musings and reveries; but i should question whether it were favorable to any settled scheme of thought. the gardener told us that there used to be a pebbly beach on the margin of the river, and that it was southey's habit to sit and write there, using a tree of peculiar shape for a table. an alteration in the current of the river has swept away the beach, and the tree, too, has fallen. all these things were interesting to me, although southey was not, i think, a picturesque man, —not one whose personal character takes a strong hold on the imagination. in these walks he used to wear a pair of shoes heavily clamped with iron; very ponderous they must have been, from the particularity with which the gardener mentioned them.

the gardener took leave of us at the front entrance of the grounds, and, returning to the king's arms, we ordered a one-horse fly for the fall of lodore. our drive thither was along the banks of derwentwater, and it is as beautiful a road, i imagine, as can be found in england or anywhere else. i like derwentwater the best of all the lakes, so far as i have yet seen them. skiddaw lies at the head of a long even ridge of mountains, rising into several peaks, and one higher than the rest. on the eastern side there are many noble eminences, and on the west, along which we drove, there is a part of the way a lovely wood, and nearly the whole distance a precipitous range of lofty cliffs, descending sheer down without any slope, except what has been formed in the lapse of ages by the fall of fragments, and the washing down of smaller stones. the declivity thus formed along the base of the cliffs is in some places covered with trees or shrubs; elsewhere it is quite bare and barren. the precipitous parts of the cliffs are very grand; the whole scene, indeed, might be characterized as one of stern grandeur with an embroidery of rich beauty, without lauding it too much. all the sternness of it is softened by vegetative beauty wherever it can possibly be thrown in; and there is not here, so strongly as along windermere, evidence that human art has been helping out nature. i wish it were possible to give any idea of the shapes of the hills; with these, at least, man has nothing to do, nor ever will have anything to do. as we approached the bottom of the lake, and of the beautiful valley in which it lies, we saw one hill that seemed to crouch down like a titanic watch-dog, with its rear towards the spectator, guarding the entrance to the valley. the great superiority of these mountains over those of new england is their variety and definiteness of shape, besides the abundance everywhere of water prospects, which are wanting among our own hills. they rise up decidedly, and each is a hill by itself, while ours mingle into one another, and, besides, have such large bases that you can tell neither where they begin nor where they end. many of these cumberland mountains have a marked vertebral shape, so that they often look like a group of huge lions, lying down with their backs turned toward each other. they slope down steeply from narrow ridges; hence their picturesque seclusions of valleys and dales, which subdivide the lake region into so many communities. our hills, like apple-dumplings in a dish, have no such valleys as these.

there is a good inn at lodore,—a small, primitive country inn, which has latterly been enlarged and otherwise adapted to meet the convenience of the guests brought thither by the fame of the cascade; but it is still a country inn, though it takes upon itself the title of hotel.

we found pleasant rooms here, and established ourselves for the night. from this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of skiddaw at the head of it. the cascade is within three or four minutes' walk, through the garden gate, towards the cliff, at the base of which the inn stands. the visitor would need no other guide than its own voice, which is said to be audible sometimes at the distance of four miles. as we were coming from keswick, we caught glimpses of its white foam high up the precipice; and it is only glimpses that can be caught anywhere, because there is no regular sheet of falling water. once, i think, it must have fallen abruptly over the edge of the long line of precipice that here extends along parallel with the shore of the lake; but, in the course of time, it has gnawed and sawed its way into the heart of the cliff,—this persistent little stream,—so that now it has formed a rude gorge, adown which it hurries and tumbles in the wildest way, over the roughest imaginable staircase. standing at the bottom of the fall, you have a far vista sloping upward to the sky, with the water everywhere as white as snow, pouring and pouring down, now on one side of the gorge, now on the other, among immense bowlders, which try to choke its passage. it does not attempt to leap over these huge rocks, but finds its way in and out among then, and finally gets to the bottom after a hundred tumbles. it cannot be better described than in southey's verses, though it is worthy of better poetry than that. after all, i do not know that the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of the scene; for it is very grand,—this fissure through the cliff,—with a steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on which trees and shrubbery have grown. the right-hand precipice, however, has shelves affording sufficient hold for small trees, but nowhere does it slant. if it were not for the white little stream falling gently downward, and for the soft verdure upon either precipice, and even along the very pathway of the cascade, it would be a very stern vista up that gorge.

i shall not try to describe it any more. it has not been praised too much, though it may have been praised amiss. i went thither again in the morning, and climbed a good way up, through the midst of its rocky descent, and i think i could have reached the top in this way. it is remarkable that the bounds of the water, from one step of its broken staircase to another, give an impression of softness and gentleness; but there are black, turbulent pools among the great bowlders, where the stream seems angry at the difficulties which it meets with. looking upward in the sunshine, i could see a rising mist, and i should not wonder if a speck of rainbow were sometimes visible. i noticed a small oak in the bed of the cascade, and there is a lighter vegetation scattered about.

at noon we took a car for portinscale, and drove back along the road to keswick, through which we passed, stopping to get a perhaps of letters at the post-office, and reached portinscale, which is a mile from keswick. after dinner we walked over a bridge, and through a green lane, to the church where southey is buried. it is a white church, of norman architecture, with a low, square tower. as we approached, we saw two persons entering the portal, and, following them in, we found the sexton, who was a tall, thin old man, with white hair, and an intelligent, reverent face, showing the edifice to a stout, red-faced, self-important, good-natured john bull of a gentleman. without any question on our part, the old sexton immediately led us to southey's monument, which is placed in a side aisle, where there is not breadth for it to stand free of the wall; neither is it in a very good light. but, it seemed to me a good work of art,—a recumbent figure of white marble, on a couch, the drapery of which he has drawn about him,—being quite enveloped in what may be a shroud. the sculptor has not intended to represent death, for the figure lies on its side, and has a book in its hand, and the face is lifelike, and looks full of expression,—a thin, high-featured, poetic face, with a finely proportioned head and abundant hair. it represents southey rightly, at whatever age he died, in the full maturity of manhood, when he was strongest and richest. i liked the statue, and wished that it lay in a broader aisle, or in the chancel, where there is an old tomb of a knight and lady of the ratcliffe family, who have held the place of honor long enough to yield it now to a poet. southey's sculptor was lough. i must not forget to mention that john bull, climbing on a bench, to get a better view of the statue, tumbled off with a racket that resounded irreverently through the church.

the old, white-headed, thin sexton was a model man of his class, and appeared to take a loving and cheerful interest in the building, and in those who, from age to age, have worshipped and been buried there. it is a very ancient and interesting church. within a few years it has been thoroughly repaired as to the interior, and now looks as if it might endure ten more centuries; and i suppose we see little that is really ancient, except the double row of norman arches, of light freestone, that support the oaken beams and rafters of the roof. all the walls, however, are venerable, and quite preserve the identity of the edifice. there is a stained-glass window of modern manufacture, and in one of the side windows, set amidst plain glass, there is a single piece, five hundred years old, representing st. anthony, very finely executed, though it looks a little faded. along the walls, on each side, between the arched windows, there are marble slabs affixed, with inscriptions to the memories of those who used to occupy the seats beneath. i remember none of great antiquity, nor any old monument, except that in the chancel, over the knight and lady of the ratcliffe family. this consists of a slab of stone, on four small stone pillars, about two feet high. the slab is inlaid with a brass plate, on which is sculptured the knight in armor, and the lady in the costume of elizabeth's time, exceedingly well done and well preserved, and each figure about eighteen inches in length. the sexton showed us a rubbing of them on paper. under the slab, which, supported by the low stone pillars, forms a canopy for them, lie two sculptured figures of stone, of life size, and at full length, representing the same persons; but i think the sculptor was hardly equal in his art to the engraver.

the most-curious antique relic in the church is the font. the bowl is very capacious, sufficiently so to admit of the complete immersion of a child of two or three months old. on the outside, in several compartments, there are bas-reliefs of scriptural and symbolic subjects, —such as the tree of life, the word proceeding out of god's mouth, the crown of thorns,—all in the quaintest taste, sculptured by some hand of a thousand years ago, and preserving the fancies of monkish brains, in stone. the sexton was very proud of this font and its sculpture, and took a kindly personal interest, in showing it; and when we had spent as much time as we could inside, he led us to southey's grave in the churchyard. he told us that he had known southey long and well, from early manhood to old age; for he was only twenty-nine when he came to keswick to reside. he had known wordsworth too, and coleridge, and lovell; and he had seen southey and wordsworth walking arm in arm together in that churchyard. he seemed to revere southey's memory, and said that he had been much lamented, and that as many as a hundred people came to the churchyard when he was buried. he spoke with great praise of mrs. southey, his first wife, telling of her charity to the poor, and how she was a blessing to the neighborhood; but he said nothing in favor of the second mrs. southey, and only mentioned her selling the library, and other things, after her husband's death, and going to london. yet i think she was probably a good woman, and meets with less than justice because she took the place of another good woman, and had not time and opportunity to prove herself as good. as for southey himself, my idea is, that few better or more blameless men have ever lived; but he seems to lack color, passion, warmth, or something that should enable me to bring him into close relation with myself. the graveyard where his body lies is not so rural and picturesque as that where wordsworth is buried; although skiddaw rises behind it, and the greta is murmuring at no very great distance away. but the spot itself has a somewhat bare and bold aspect, with no shadow of trees, no shrubbery.

over his grave there is a ponderous, oblong block of slate, a native mineral of this region, as hard as iron, and which will doubtless last quite as long as southey's works retain any vitality in english literature. it is not a monument fit for a poet. there is nothing airy or graceful about it,—and, indeed, there cannot be many men so solid and matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. wordsworth's grave is much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over southey's. most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem to have been recently erected.

we now returned to the hotel, and took a car for the valley of st. john. the sky seemed to portend rain in no long time, and skiddaw had put on his cap; but the people of the hotel and the driver said that there would be no rain this afternoon, and their opinion proved correct. after driving a few miles, we again cane within sight of the enchanted castle. it stands rather more than midway adown the declivity of one of the ridges that form the valley to the left, as you go southward, and its site would have been a good one for a fortress, intended to defend the lower entrance of this mountain defile. at a proper distance, it looks not unlike the gray dilapidation of a gothic castle, which has been crumbling and crumbling away for ages, until time might be supposed to have imperceptibly stolen its massive pile from man, and given it back to nature; its towers and battlements and arched entrances being so much defaced and decayed that all the marks of human labor had nearly been obliterated, and the angles of the hewn stone rounded away, while mosses and weeds and bushes grow over it as freely as over a natural ledge of rocks. it is conceivable that in some lights, and in some states of the atmosphere, a traveller, at the entrance of the valley, might really imagine that he beheld a castle here; but, for myself, i must acknowledge that it required a willing fancy to make me see it. as we drew nearer, the delusion did not immediately grow less strong; but, at length, we found ourselves passing at the foot of the declivity, and, behold! it was nothing but an enormous ledge of rock, coming squarely out of the hillside, with other parts of the ledge cropping out in its vicinity. looking back, after passing, we saw a knoll or hillock, of which the castled rock is the bare face. there are two or three stone cottages along the roadside, beneath the magic castle, and within the enchanted ground. scott, in the bridal of triermain, locates the castle in the middle of the valley, and makes king arthur ride around it, which any mortal would have great difficulty in doing. this vale of st. john has very striking scenery. blencathra shuts it in to the northward, lying right across the entrance; and on either side there are lofty crags and declivities, those to the west being more broken and better wooded than the ridge to the eastward, which stretches along for several miles, steep, high, and bare, producing only grass enough for sheep pasture, until it rises into the dark brow of helvellyn. adown this ridge, seen afar, like a white ribbon, comes here and there a cascade, sending its voice before it, which distance robs of all its fury, and makes it the quietest sound in the world; and while you see the foamy leap of its upper course a mile or two away, you may see and hear the selfsame little brook babbling through a field, and passing under the arch of a rustic bridge beneath your feet. it is a deep seclusion, with mountains and crags on all sides.

about a mile beyond the castle we stopped at a little wayside inn, the king's head, and put up for the night. this, i believe, is the only inn which i have found in england—the only one where i have eaten and slept —that does not call itself a hotel. it is very primitive in its arrangements,—a long, low, whitewashed, unadorned, and ugly cottage of two stories. at one extremity is a barn and cow-house, and next to these the part devoted to the better class of guests, where we had our parlor and chambers, contiguous to which is the kitchen and common room, paved with flagstones,—and, lastly, another barn and stable; all which departments are not under separate roofs, but under the same long contiguity, and forming the same building. our parlor opens immediately upon the roadside, without any vestibule. the house appears to be of some antiquity, with beams across the low ceilings; but the people made us pretty comfortable at bed and board, and fed us with ham and eggs, veal-steaks, honey, oatcakes, gooseberry-tarts, and such cates and dainties,—making a moderate charge for all. the parlor was adorned with rude engravings. i remember only a plate of the duke of wellington, at three stages of his life; and there were minerals, delved, doubtless, out of the hearts of the mountains, upon the mantel-piece. the chairs were of an antiquated fashion, and had very capacious seats. we were waited upon by two women, who looked and acted not unlike the countryfolk of new england,—say, of new hampshire,—except that these may have been more deferential.

while we remained here, i took various walks to get a glimpse of helvellyn, and a view of thirlmere,—which is rather two lakes than one, being so narrow at one point as to be crossed by a foot-bridge. its shores are very picturesque, coming down abruptly upon it, and broken into crags and prominences, which view their shaggy faces in its mirror; and helvellyn slopes steeply upward, from its southern shore, into the clouds. on its eastern bank, near the foot-bridge, stands armboth house, which miss martineau says is haunted; and i saw a painted board at the entrance of the road which leads to it advertising lodgings there. the ghosts, of course, pay nothing for their accommodations.

at noon, on the day after our arrival, j——- and i went to visit the enchanted castle; and we were so venturesome as to turn aside from the road, and ascend the declivity towards its walls, which indeed we hoped to surmount. it proved a very difficult undertaking, the site of the fortress being much higher and steeper than we had supposed; but we did clamber upon what we took for the most elevated portion, when lo! we found that we had only taken one of the outworks, and that there was a gorge of the hill betwixt us and the main walls; while the citadel rose high above, at more than twice the elevation which we had climbed. j——- wished to go on, and i allowed him to climb, till he appeared to have reached so steep and lofty a height that he looked hardly bigger than a monkey, and i should not at all have wondered had he come rolling down to the base of the rock where i sat. but neither did he get actually within the castle, though he might have done so but for a high stone fence, too difficult for him to climb, which runs from the rock along the hillside. the sheep probably go thither much oftener than any other living thing, and to them we left the castle of st. john, with a shrub waving from its battlements, instead of a banner.

after dinner we ordered a car for ambleside, and while it was getting ready, i went to look at the river of st. john, which, indeed, flows close beside our inn, only just across the road, though it might well be overlooked unless you specially sought for it. it is a brook brawling over the stones, very much as brooks do in new england, only we never think of calling them rivers there. i could easily have made a leap from shore to shore, and j——- scrambled across on no better footing than a rail. i believe i have complained of the want of brooks in other parts of england, but there is no want of them here, and they are always interesting, being of what size they may.

we drove down the valley, and gazed at the vast slope of helvellyn, and at thirlmere beneath it, and at eagle's crag and raven's crag, which beheld themselves in it, and we cast many a look behind at blencathra, and that noble brotherhood of mountains out of the midst of which we came. but, to say the truth, i was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me that i had eaten a score of mountains, and quaffed as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days,—and the natural consequence was a surfeit. there was scarcely a single place in all our tour where i should not have been glad to spend a month; but, by flitting so quickly from one point to another, i lost all the more recondite beauties, and had come away without retaining even the surface of much that i had seen. i am slow to feel,—slow, i suppose, to comprehend, and, like the anaconda, i need to lubricate any object a great deal before i can swallow it and actually make it my own. yet i shall always enjoy having made this journey, and shall wonder the more at england, which comprehends so much, such a rich variety, within its narrow bounds. if england were all the world, it still would have been worth while for the creator to have made it, and mankind would have had no cause to find fault with their abode; except that there is not room enough for so many as might be happy here.

we left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as long as we could at blencathra, and skiddaw over its shoulder, and the clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. passing by dummail raise (which is a mound of stones over an old british king), we entered westmoreland, and soon had the vale of grasmere before us, with the church where wordsworth lies, and nab scaur and rydal water farther on. at ambleside we took another car for newby bridge, whither we drove along the eastern shore of windermere. the superb scenery through which we had been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we should have thought it more than commonly interesting. hawkshead is the only village on our road,—a small, whitewashed old town, with a whitewashed old norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts. it was between seven and eight o'clock when we reached newby bridge, and heard u——'s voice greeting us, and saw her head, crowned with a wreath of flowers, looking down at us, out of the window of our parlor.

and to-day, july 23d, i have written this most incomplete and unsatisfactory record of what we have done and seen since wednesday last. i am pretty well convinced that all attempts at describing scenery, especially mountain scenery, are sheer nonsense. for one thing, the point of view being changed, the whole description, which you made up from the previous point of view, is immediately falsified. and when you have done your utmost, such items as those setting forth the scene in a play,—"a mountainous country, in the distance a cascade tumbling over a precipice, and in front a lake; on one side an ivy-covered cottage,"— this dry detail brings the matter before one's mind's eyes more effectually than all the art of word-painting.

july 27th.—we are still at newby bridge, and nothing has occurred of remarkable interest, nor have we made any excursions, beyond moderate walks. two days have been rainy, and to-day there is more rain. we find such weather as tolerable here as it would probably be anywhere; but it passes rather heavily with the children,—and for myself, i should prefer sunshine. though mr. white's books afford me some entertainment, especially an odd volume of ben jonson's plays, containing "volpone," "the alchemist," "bartholomew fair," and others. "the alchemist" is certainly a great play. we watch all arrivals and other events from our parlor window,—a stage-coach driving up four times in the twenty-four hours, with its forlorn outsiders, all saturated with rain; the steamer, from the head of the lake, landing a crowd of passengers, who stroll up to the hotel, drink a glass of ale, lean over the parapet of the bridge, gaze at the flat stones which pave the bottom of the liver, and then hurry back to the steamer again; cars, phaetons, horsemen, all damped and disconsolate. there are a number of young men staying at the hotel, some of whom go forth in all the rain, fishing, and come back at nightfall, trudging heavily, but with creels on their backs that do not seem very heavy. yesterday was fair, and enlivened us a good deal. returning from a walk in the forenoon, i found a troop of yeomanry cavalry in the stable-yard of the hotel. they were the north lancashire regiment, and were on their way to liverpool for the purpose of drill. not being old campaigners, their uniforms and accoutrements were in so much the finer order, all bright, and looking span-new, and they themselves were a body of handsome and stalwart young men; and it was pleasant to look at their helmets, and red jackets and carbines, and steel scabbarded swords, and gallant steeds,—all so martial in aspect,—and to know that they were only play-soldiers, after all, and were never likely to do nor suffer any warlike mischief. by and by their bugles sounded, and they trotted away, wheeling over the ivy-grown stone bridge, and disappearing behind the trees on the milnethorpe road. our host comes forth from the bar with a bill, which he presents to an orderly-sergeant. he, the host, then tells me that he himself once rode many years, a trooper, in this regiment, and that all his comrades were larger men than himself. yet mr. thomas white is a good-sized man, and now, at all events, rather overweight for a dragoon.

yesterday came one of those bands of music that seem to itinerate everywhere about the country. it consisted of a young woman who played the harp, a bass-viol player, a fiddler, a flutist, and a bugler, besides a little child, of whom, i suppose, the woman was the mother. they sat down on a bench by the roadside, opposite the house, and played several tunes, and by and by the waiter brought them a large pitcher of ale, which they quaffed with apparent satisfaction; though they seemed to be foreigners by their mustachios and sallow hue, and would perhaps have preferred a vinous potation. one would like to follow these people through their vagrant life, and see them in their social relations, and overhear their talk with each other. all vagrants are interesting; and there is a much greater variety of them here than in america,—people who cast themselves on fortune, and take whatever she gives without a certainty of anything. i saw a travelling tinker yesterday,—a man with a leather apron, and a string of skewers hung at his girdle, and a pack over his shoulders, in which, no doubt, were his tools and materials of trade.

it is remarkable what a natural interest everybody feels in fishing. an angler from the bridge immediately attracts a group to watch his luck. it is the same with j——-, fishing for minnows, on the platform near which the steamer lands its passengers. by the by, u—— caught a minnow last evening, and, immediately after, a good-sized perch,—her first fish.

july 30th.—we left newby bridge, all of us, on saturday, at twelve o'clock, and steamed up the lake to ambleside; a pretty good day as to weather, but with a little tendency to shower. there was nothing new on the lake, and no new impressions, as far as i can remember. at ambleside, s——- and nurse went shopping, after which we took a carriage for grasmere, and established ourselves at brown's hotel. i find that my impressions from our previous sight of all these scenes do not change on revision. they are very beautiful; but, if i must say it, i am a little weary of them. we soon tire of things which we visit merely by way of spectacle, and with which we have no real and permanent connection. in such cases we very quickly wish the spectacle to be taken away, and another substituted; at all events i do not care about seeing anything more of the english lakes for at least a year.

perhaps a part of my weariness is owing to the hotel-life which we lead. at an english hotel the traveller feels as if everybody, from the landlord downward, united in a joint and individual purpose to fleece him, because all the attendants who come in contact with him are to be separately considered. so, after paying, in the first instance, a very heavy bill, for what would seem to cover the whole indebtedness, there remain divers dues still to be paid, to no trifling amount, to the landlord's servants,—dues not to be ascertained, and which you never can know whether you have properly satisfied. you can know, perhaps, when you have less than satisfied them, by the aspect of the waiter, which i wish i could describe, not disrespectful in the slightest degree, but a look of profound surprise, a gaze at the offered coin (which he nevertheless pockets) as if he either did not see it, or did not know it, or could not believe his eyesight;—all this, however, with the most quiet forbearance, a christian-like non-recognition of an unmerited wrong and insult; and finally, all in a moment's space indeed, he quits you and goes about his other business. if you have given him too much, you are made sensible of your folly by the extra amount of his gratitude, and the bows with which he salutes you from the doorstep. generally, you cannot very decidedly say whether you have been right or wrong; but, in almost all cases, you decidedly feel that you have been fleeced. then the living at the best of english hotels, so far as my travels have brought me acquainted with them, deserves but moderate praise, and is especially lacking in variety. nothing but joints, joints, joints; sometimes, perhaps, a meat-pie, which, if you eat it, weighs upon your conscience, with the idea that you have eaten the scraps of other people's dinners. at the lake hotels, the fare is lamb and mutton and grout,—the latter not always fresh, and soon tired of. we pay like nabobs, and are expected to be content with plain mutton.

we spent the day yesterday at grasmere, in quiet walks about the hotel; and at a little past six in the afternoon, i took my departure in the stage-coach for windermere. the coach was greatly overburdened with outside passengers,—fifteen in all, besides the four insiders, and one of the fifteen formed the apex of an immense pile of luggage on the top. it seems to me miraculous that we did not topple over, the road being so hilly and uneven, and the driver, i suspect, none the steadier for his visits to all the tap-rooms along the route from cockermouth. there was a tremendous vibration of the coach now and then; and i saw that, in case of our going over, i should be flung headlong against the high stone fence that bordered most of the road. in view of this i determined to muffle my head in the folds of my thick shawl at the moment of overturn, and as i could do no better for myself, i awaited my fate with equanimity. as far as apprehension goes, i had rather travel from maine to georgia by rail, than from grasmere to windermere by stage-coach.

at lowwood, the landlady espied me from the window, and sent out a large packet that had arrived by mail; but as it was addressed to some person of the christian name of william, i did not venture to open it. she said, also, that a gentleman had been there, who very earnestly desired to see me, and i have since had reason to suppose that this was allingham, the poet. we arrived at windermere at half past seven, and waited nearly an hour for the train to start. i took a ticket for lancaster, and talked there about the war with a gentleman in the coffee-room, who took me for an englishman, as most people do nowadays, and i heard from him—as you may from all his countrymen—an expression of weariness and dissatisfaction with the whole business. these fickle islanders! how differently they talked a year ago! john bull sees now that he never was in a worse predicament in his life; and yet it would not take much to make him roar as bellicosely as ever. i went to bed at eleven, and slept unquietly on feathers.

i had purposed to rise betimes, and see the town of lancaster before breakfast. but here i reckoned without my host; for, in the first place, i had no water for my ablutions, and my boots were not brushed; and so i could not get down stairs till the hour i named for my coffee and chops; and, secondly, the breakfast was delayed half an hour, though promised every minute. in fine, i had but just time to take a hasty walk round lancaster castle, and see what i could of the town on my way,—a not very remarkable town, built of stone, with taller houses than in the middle shires of england, narrow streets up and down an eminence on which the castle is situated, with the town immediately about it. the castle is a satisfactory edifice, but so renovated that the walls look almost entirely modern, with the exception of the fine old front, with the statue of an armed warrior, very likely john of gaunt himself, in a niche over the norman arch of the entrance. close beside the castle stands an old church.

the train left lancaster at half past nine, and reached liverpool at twelve, over as flat and uninteresting a country as i ever travelled. i have betaken myself to the rock ferry hotel, where i am as comfortable as i could be anywhere but at home; but it is rather comfortless to think of hone as three years off, and three thousand miles away. with what a sense of utter weariness, not fully realized till then, we shall sink down on our own threshold, when we reach it. the moral effect of being without a settled abode is very wearisome.

our coachman from grasmere to windermere looked like a great beer-barrel, oozy with his proper liquor. i suppose such solid soakers never get upset.