WINDERMERE-RICH AND POOR. 333 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 every thing 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 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 valleys 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 mossy, 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 remains 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 WINDERMERE-SCENERY. 335 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 dares 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 sup posed, 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 main land, an elevated pavilion, called the Station, which commands a view of the whole lake that 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 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 going 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 valleys, 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. A walk we took some days ago in the latter valley carried us to the house of a statesman, situated on the slope of a hill commanding a beautiful view. This honest rustic was seated on a bench, placed in the best situation for the view, under the shade of an ash; and there could be no doubt that he had come to this seat of his in order to enjoy that view. After the usual salutations, we said something about the fine prospect; but, to our great surprise, he would not allow that there was much beauty in it, and said he knew we had seen much finer pros pects than that. It appeared evident that he was ashamed to admire, as if he had never been out of his village, by the same sort of affectation which WINDERMERE-CONISTON WATER. 337 would have made a citizen pretend raptures, that he might not be supposed insensible to the beauties of the country: affected people are generally found to be the reverse of what they endeavour to appear, and give, without intending it, the key of their true dispositions. in any Oct. 6.-We went yesterday to Coniston water with our friends, and their friends, on foot, on horseback, and in a cart, by roads impracticable other way; first along the Brathy, a mountain stream; then up the ridge which separates the valley of Langdale and the one filled by Coniston water. From the top of it, we saw this fine piece of water below us, deep set in a frame of black mountains, pressing round its head. The banks, however, we found well inhabited and cultivated; and were shewn the house of the parents of a young lady lately dead (Miss E. Smith), who has since become so justly celebrated, by the proofs she left behind her of an erudition uncommon for her age and her sex. This family were formerly proprietors of Piercefield on the Wye, described in this Journal. The best mounted of the party pushed on to the other extremity of the lake, seven miles further, which is merely pretty. All the lakes begin among mountains, and end in a plain. Here, therefore, on our return, we had the stupendous rampart round the head of the lake full in sight the whole way, towering over such headlands, or rocks, or trees, as crossed our road occasionally, and at other times rising from the bosom of the lake itself, in hazy greatness. After dining at a comfortable little inn in the village of Coniston, we ascended, on foot, the mountain behind, along a rapid little stream, tumbling down its rocky bed as |