336 PATTERDALE ON ULSWATER-TREES. ago, near the great oak. This great oak, a mere shell, fell of itself in 1788, and, as it may be supposed to have attained its meridian at the time of the foundation of the college, it gives the tree nine centuries. I shall mention one more: The tree in the New Forest, against which the arrow glanced which killed William Rufus, 700 years ago, was still in existence, marked by tradition, but a few years since, and must have been a well-grown tree at the period of the accident. It is, perhaps, worthy of remark, that all these venerable plants which have attained such an advanced age, are equally noted for their size, far exceeding that of their fellows; while among animals, I mean among individuals of the same species, it is almost the reverse. Gilpin mentions a yew tree at Fortingal, near Taymouth in Scotland, fifty-six feet and a half in circumference. Our Patterdale yew is a mere twig to this; and the good people of its neighbourhood must give it full 8000 years, measuring more than four times the solid contents of the other. The family of the yews is almost extinct in England. They used to be planted by the Britons of old, who were great archers, to make bows, the wood being remarkably elastic and tough; but, in these degenerate days, nobody thinks of planting them any more. Sept. 19.-Windermere. We have scaled the ramparts of the mountains between Ulswater and Windermere, and admired again the wild. magnificence of the pass, steeper and higher, perhaps, than any we have seen in Scotland. We shall rest here with our friends during the remainder of the fine autumnal weather, making only occasional excursions among the lakes and mountains, of which this is the centre. There are no retired places in England, no place WINDERMERE RICH AND POOR. 337 where you see only the country and countrymen; you meet, on the contrary, every where town-people elegantly dressed and lodged, having a number of servants, and exchanging invitations. England, in short, seems to be the country-house of London; cultivated for amusement only, and where all is subservient to picturesque luxury and ostentation. Here we are, in a remote corner of the country, among mountains, 278 miles from the capital;-a place without commerce or manufactures, not on any high road; yet everything is much the same as in the neighbourhood of London. Land, half rock, is bought up at any price, merely on account of the beauty of the spot. The complaints about scarcity of servants and labourers, and their consequent high prices, are general. It is plain there are too few poor for the rich. The latter talk of the weight of taxes as intolerable, and of the increase of price of everything as excessively alarming; while the poor seem to take all this very easily, increasing and multiplying; while the others decay and fall off continually. It is the pot on the fire,-the liquor ascends and descends incessantly; it no sooner touches the bottom, than, reduced to vapour, it flies upwards; no sooner comes to the top, than, divested of its heat, it falls down again. The proprietors of land alone are out of the vortex, safe at anchor, while the others are driving in the storm. Woe be to them if they were to lose their hold, and be carried away with the rest ;-unprepared as they are, they would suffer most. The rich show certainly a very great eagerness to buy land, being a safe property, and a permanent revenue; and because there is really, notwithstanding the loud complaints, an inundation of wealth in the country. The effect of competition is to raise the 338 WINDERMERE-LANGDALE pikes. price of land and of labour to such a degree, that the small landholders are tempted by the first, and indeed forced by the latter, to sell, and become simple farmers; swelling thus the number of those who have nothing to lose. This excessive concentration of tangible property is considered, by many well-informed people, as more dangerous, more conducive to a revolution, than the weight of taxes, or any of the other popular grievances. These are the pretences, that the real object of revolutionary people. It is difficult and odious to ruin a great part of the people, as was done in France, easy and popular to strip a few great proprietors. The country round the head of Windermere is varied with hills and mountains, the highest of which does not exceed 2000 feet; the lowest are clothed with wood, coppice only, and decorated with fine masses of rocks. The intervening vallies rich and verdant, and watered by lively streams, expanding frequently into small lakes, (tarns.) The ancient inhabitants are called Statesmen, (freeholders of the rank of peasantry); their houses generally on the sides of the hills, built of rough stone, grey and messy, spreading, low, and thatched; a grove of ash often near; the interior clean and comfortable. The number of these small proprietors is diminishing daily. The valley of Langdale is one of those we have explored. Its lower end dips into the lake, whence, rising insensibly between two irregular screens of mountains for six or seven miles, it closes at the base of the Langdale Pikes, whose fantastic double summit is distinguished for twenty miles around. A stream of water comes down the hill along a wide and deep fissure of the rock, between the cheeks of which a great block has fallen, and re WINDERMERE-SCENERY. 339 mains suspended, forming a natural bridge of terrific construction. We and our friends, forming a considerable troop, mounted and on foot, were attended by a small cart of the country, carrying provisions, and the sick and wounded of the party on two bags of hay. On our return, the sun set with admirable splendour behind the Langdale Pikes, and made us look back very often. Among many changes of the scene, we remarked this;-a very dark ridge, perfectly in shadow with another beyond it, and between them fiery streams of light, like the mouth of a volcano in flames. Through ridges burning in her western beam, The surrounding mountains, catching the brightness, exhibited, in sharp edges, the profile of their bold and fanciful forms. I tried to sketch a view; but the play of light was quite discouraging, and the very grotesqueness of some of the outlines too much for drawing. Art does not venture on such things; it belongs to nature alone to be gracefully awkward,—gaudy and chaste at the same time, and "harmonieuse parmi toutes les dissonances." We were so pleased with this spot, that we have since gone to it again several times at the same hour, and enjoyed scenes ever different and ever admirable. It is three or four miles north of Clappersgate, south of Skelett's bridge. The lake of Windermere has a large island about the middle of its length, occupied, as may be supposed, by a rich individual, Mr Curwen, a great agriculturist, and considerable in Parliament, who has built a house on it, and, on a promontory of the mainland, an elevated pavilion, called the Station, which commands a view of the whole lake ;-that 340 WINDERMERE-PLEASURE-BOATS. is to say, of all the water of the lake;-but unluckily it turns its back on all its beauties. The choice of this station affords no favourable specimen of the proprietor's taste, notwithstanding the coloured panes of his windows, which are considered as symptomatic of it. Opposite this island resides the celebrated Bishop of Landaff, who has contributed essentially to render chemistry a popular science, and who has defended his faith against the rude attacks of our noted Tom Paine, in an ingenious work with an unfortunate title. This prelate is distinguished in Parliament by political principles uncommon in his order. On our way to the island, we passed several pleasure-boats at anchor and under sail, finely formed, light and swift. The waters of the Seine never bore any thing the least comparable to the elegance of English pleasure-boats. The water of this lake, as of all lakes, is perfectly transparent, and admits of seeing the smallest object at a considerable depth; you can follow a pin go ing down ten or twelve feet. The lead gives thirty or forty fathoms in some places. We asked our boatman, who had been rowing five hours without appearance of weariness, how many years he had followed his employment? he answered, 70 years. This undoubtedly does great credit to the air of Windermere. Two long vallies, separated by a ridge of mountains, lie in the direction of the head of the lake, and seem a continuation of its basin; one is Langdale, already described; the other, parallel to it, contains another lake, Grasmere. In a walk we took some days ago in the latter valley, we came to the house of a statesman, situated on the slope of a hill commanding a beautiful view. This ho |