Weatherlam—Tilberthwaite—The Brathay—Wordsworth's Bridges—Hallgarth—Little Langdale, its Tarn, &c.—Whitewash, pro and con—The Busk and Fell-foot—“Joan’s Ale was New”—Ancient Tumulus—Ascent of Wrynose—The Shire Stones—Source of the Duddon—Wordsworth's Sonnets thereon—Author’s ditto ditto—Traditional Sayings about Old Woods—Their Extent Disputed.

As you wind round the heel of Raven Crag, you obtain a fine view of the Old Man’s stupendous brother, Weatherlam, rearing his massive summit over the circumjacent hills, like a giant amid ordinary mortals. You follow a narrow winding road through the verdant fields and copse-clad hillocks of Holme ground, and soon find yourself in the vale of Tilberthwaite; and “O,” you suspirate, as you roll your eyes around, “what a spot for a honeymoon—'the world forgetting, by the world forgot'—so lovely in its seclusion and so lonely in its loveliness.” The only unpleasant characteristic of Tilberthwaite is an odd, uncomfortable feeling of which, though absurd enough, you cannot entirely divest yourself—an idea of difficulty in getting out of it. It is so encompassed by steep hills and hanging woods, that you involuntarily compare yourself to a cockroach in the bottom of a porridge basin. The name of Tilberthwaite is said to be compounded of Tillbear and thwaite, and to signify an enclosure for the cultivation of bear (pronounced beer), an old name for barley. This word, like many more that are obsolete in England, is still used in Scotland; for instance, it occurs in Tam O'Shanter, where it is said that Cutty Sark—

And again, an old song commences—

But the day advances, and you’d better advance along with it, for “you've many a mile to go” before you get back to your comfortable quarters at Conistone. Push on then, along the bye road through the fields, and you again reach the high road. You follow it through the farm-yard—take the gate to the right, and pursue a rough way meandering pleasantly for about a mile through an irregularly-wooded vale. The enormous heaps of loose blue stone on every side of you are from the slate quarries, of which I shall perhaps tell you more when I have more time.

The stream you now approach is a branch of the Brathay, which rises on Wrynose and other hills round the head of Little Langdale, down which valley it flows, forming a fine fall at Colwith and at Skelwith, after joining the Great Langdale branch in Elterwater, and become a principal feeder of the “Regal Windermere;” you stand upon the verge of Lancashire, for this brook here divides it from Westmorland. Don’t cross it as yet, but follow its course upwards on the Lancashire side, and you will soon fall in with a primitive stone bridge—one of the very few remaining of those whose rapid disappearance Mr Wordsworth deplores, whilst he expresses admiration of “the daring and graceful contempt of danger and accommodation with which so many of them are constructed, the rudeness of form of some, and their endless variety.” If neglect of danger and accommodation, and rudeness of form, be the distinguishing and essential attributes of the class, this, connecting Tilberthwaite with Little Langdale, and called Slater’s Bridge, ought certainly to be preserved as an exquisite and unique specimen of a style of bridge all but extinct; for the sturdy Dalesmen perversely prefer bridges that are safe and commodious, though they may sacrifice the picturesque and rudeness of form to obtain these vulgar requisites.

Pass by, not over, the bridge—a horse passing over it might remind one of the famous asinine performer on the tight-rope—and you come to the hamlet of Hallgarth, which has little to distinguish it from a thousand others, save the rather uncomfortable peculiarity of not being touched upon by the “blessed sun” for about three months in the year. As you leave it by a steep acclivity, you had better take a survey of Little Langdale which lies spread out at your feet. Rather farther than midway between you and the abruptly rising range of hill called Lingmoor, which divides this vale from its larger namesake, lies Langdale Tarn, which bears out the Poet Laureate's assertion, that “Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy ground.” The chief beauty of Little Langdale consists in the irregular hillocky nature of its ground and the sites of its dwellings, many of which nestle so cozily in little dells, behind rocky knolls, and beneath umbrageous trees, as to convey a notion of the most attractive snugness; but here I am heretic enough to dispute the infallibility of the Poet Laureate’s taste. He has declared war against whitewash in something like the following terms:—“The objections to white, as a colour, in large spots or masses in landscapes, especially in a mountainous country, are insurmountable”—and, quoting somebody who says “that white destroys the gradations A WORD FOR WHITE HOUSES.of distance,” he holds on thus—“Five or six white houses, scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, dot the surface, and divide it into triangles, or other mathematical figures, haunting the eye, and disturbing that repose which might otherwise be perfect.” By the bye, a fair lady, whose opinion, in most matters of taste, I hold in the deepest reverence, recently became a convert to this doctrine of Mr Wordsworth, because she noticed the effect just instanced, not when gazing upon a landscape, but when compiling patch work in which fragments of white intruded amongst the blues, yellows, greens, reds, and neutrals, woefully disturbed the harmony and repose of the cushion cover or quilt. Mr Wordsworth says also, in support of his anti-whitewashing theory, that “in nature, pure white is scarcely ever found but in small objects, such as flowers; or in those which are transitory, as the clouds, foam on rivers, and snow.” But I must remind those who take for gospel every word that Mr Wordsworth preaches, that the “White Cliffs of England,” the snows upon a thousand hills, and the foam of a thousand cataracts are neither minute nor transitory; and that large masses of white in nature, such as these, as well as white clouds, and the terrible white of a stormy sea upon a rocky coast are all calculated to excite sensations of the sublime and beautiful in any bosom, whether the possessor be very much of a man of feeling and imagination or the reverse. But coming back to cottages, with all due deference to the Poet Laureate’s argument, and with more to that of his fair and talented supporter, I do maintain that no objects can give such a gratifying air of life and cheerfulness to a valley surrounded, or not, by high mountains, or so strikingly enhance the bright green of herbage and foliage, or the more sombre, but warmer, tints of near or distant hills, as a liberal sprinkling over the landscape of pure white cottages, embosomed, as these are, each in its own OUT-DOORS AND IN-DOORS CONTRASTED.nest of sheltering trees; and I do wish that the farmers of Langdale, and all our other fell-dales, would expend a shilling or two annually on lime, and bestow upon their romantically situated homesteads, “the cleanly, pleasant appearance derivable from a plentiful periodical application of white-wash.” Their present grim, dingy, almost squalid exteriors, are strongly suggestive to the mind of a stranger of internal poverty, desolation and dirt, than which nothing can be more distant from their real in-door condition; for, in all these scattered houses, miserable as they look externally, there is abundance for the wants of the inmates and for the requirements of hospitality, and their cleanliness is such that, as I have partaken of many meals spread upon their unclothed tables, so, in the absence of a table, would I not scruple to eat my dinner if laid upon any of their blue flagged floors,[A] for those are cleaner than many table-cloths I have seen in the course of my peregrinations through other countries.

Mais revenons a nos moutons,—return we to our ramble. As you move forward, here take a good look at Langdale Pikes, perhaps the most picturesque hills in England, and seen to advantage from this road, over Wallend and Blea Tarn. Which last again brings Mr Wordsworth upon the stage; indeed it is difficult to descant upon any part of the lake country without running foul of him, and this Blea Tarn is the scene of one of those purely poetical descriptions so truly and peculiarly his own, which prove by the earnestness, fervour, and simplicity of their style, that their author is a true poet, with all his whims; and they may well be received as an ample atonement for even more of the middling quality than he, during his long and peaceful life, has inflicted upon the reading world.

The newly-made cart-road to your left leads to Greenbourne—a wild and retired dell under the north-eastern shoulder of Weatherlam, where a spirited and meritorious mining adventure, set on foot by some working miners from Conistone, is in progress, and is likely to prosper. The farm under the fell on the other side of the valley, is called the Busk, and was formerly a public house, as was also Fell-foot, the uppermost house in the dale. It is said of these old hostels, that they would commence brewing when they saw their chief customers, the caravans of travellers, carriers, and pack horses (then the only mode of conveying goods, as this was the only road, between Kendal and Whitehaven), appear on the top of Wrynose, and that they would have good drink ready for them by the time they reached the bottom. This reminds one of the old story of the thirsty London traveller drawing up and calling for ale at an old public house, called the “Dog and Doublet” on Carleton Thwaite, and being told by the landlady in her brewing apron, that “they happened to be out of drink just then, but if he would light his ways down and stop a leyle bit, he should have wort and welcome while the yell was getting ready.” As you approach Fell-foot you cross the beck, and entering Westmorland, come upon the ancient pack-horse road; and passing close in front of Fell-foot, a favourable sample of the old-fashioned mountain farm-house, you commence the ascent of Wrynose. In the field immediately behind the farm buildings, is a large mound or tumulus which has never been noticed in any published work, but which, it is much to be desired, that some learned antiquary would examine, and report upon its nature and probable or possible origin. It is an oblong square, with a tabular summit from thirty to forty yards long, and from ten to fifteen broad—attained by a broad terraced road of very gradual ascent, which, after encompassing the mound twice or thrice, comes out upon its summit at its northern extremity.

As you creep up the mountain, you may perceive in the deep verdant glen under your left, a number of small cone-shaped tumuli, whether formed by the hand of man or by the operations of nature this deponent sayeth not.

Having climbed for nearly a mile, please to halt and look back, and you have a view well worth all your toil, embracing Little Langdale, Colwith, Skelwith, Loughrigg, the bright waters of Windermere, and the groves and mountains beyond, altogether making up a picture approaching in beauty, though inferior in richness and variety, (as all other prospects are) to that seen from the Castlerigg, near Keswick.

And now, having nearly attained the summit of Wrynose Pass, I shall impart to you such instructions, as will enable you, without difficulty, to find the three shire stones, which here mark the spot where the three counties, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire meet; and this service I may mention is not rendered you by any of the hackney itineraries or guide-books, for I never could make them out until I received explicit directions in the matter from an old woman in Seathwaite. At what appears the top of Wrynose, when ascending it from Langdale, you come upon a short track of level ground, where the road runs along between a low wall of rock on CLASSIC GROUND.the right and a peat-moss on the left. Near to the point where the rocky wall runs down to nothing, and where the road makes a sweep to the left to rise an acclivity, look to the right, and, at a few yards distance from the road, and stuck in rather wet ground, you will descry three stones of the size of a high-crowned hat—about five feet distant from each other—and forming a triangle; each stone is in a different county, and if you are tolerably lish and lengthy of limb, you may place a foot upon one stone, the other foot on another, and your hands on the third; or should the circumstances under which you visit the spot require you to do the feat more gracefully or more decorously, you may place both feet on one and distribute your hands between the other two—either way you perform it, you may brag thereafter that you, in your individual person, have been in three counties at one and the same time.

You leave the spot where “three fair counties meet together,” and topping the aforesaid short ascent, soon begin to descend, and as you descend, do not attempt to shew your learning by quoting Virgil, and calling this “facilis descensus Averni,” for it is a most infacile and innerman-jumbling “descensus” into a very different place—a vale destined through future ages to hold a proud rank amongst the thousand be-rhymed and be-sonneted localities of ancient and modern poets, such as “The Plains of Troy, of which blind Homer sang,” “Parnassus' hill where wells fair Castaly,” “The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” “The soft flowing Avon,” “The wide and winding Rhine,” “The Banks o’ Doon,” “The Groves of Blarney,” &c., &c., &c.—for it is the subject of a rosary of sonnets by our great moral poet, of higher celebrity than any given to the world since the days of Petrarch, and I hope that neither Mr Wordsworth nor you will think that I exceed my commission by quoting here the two first of the series of “Sonnets on the River Duddon.”—

The first two lines of the second of these sonnets furnish an instance of the prime defect in Wordsworth’s philosophy and poetry, namely, his affected (for it cannot be real), contempt for, and his perpetually recurring sneer at, what he here calls sordid industry. I say this contempt cannot be real, because Wordsworth, though a great Poet, possesses quite an average share of ordinary unpoetical prudence and discernment, and though in earnest, no doubt, in his worship of “unprofaned nature” holds in due appreciation those commonplace comforts of civilized life, which, without the aid of the sordid industry, would scarcely be attainable. Moreover, to meet him on his own ground, this wild locality is by no means very “remote from every taint of sordid industry”—these hills are devoted to sheep farming, and though I am far from stigmatizing stock farmers as being more sordid than other classes, yet is their ordinary employment as essentially sordid in its nature, and as coarse, unromantic and disagreeable in its details, as any other common mode of money-making, notwithstanding all that has been said, or sung, to the contrary.

And now, in humble imitation of my betters, I cannot refrain from trying my poor hand at a sonnet, and, when you have well considered the same, I hope and believe that, however infinite you may reckon its poetical inferiority, you will admit that its sentiment is more in accordance with the subject—that it is conceived in a more Catholic spirit than those of my great prototype—

The head of this vale does not hold out much promise of beauty, and you feel surprised that any one, were he fifty times a poet, could contrive to make anything readable on such a subject as the dreary uninteresting valley before you. It is indeed a desolate spot, stretching its unrelieved length for two miles from the foot of this hill, with nothing for the eye to exercise itself, or the heart to console itself with, but bare fells, grey crags, screes and boulders, and a stone-vexed rivulet winding its lonely way along the bottom of the dale, but not a sign of life except what may be contained in moss and lichens, with here and there a little fern and grass.

There are many who would persuade you that all these bleak hills and dales were formerly and for centuries covered with dense forests. Mr Wordsworth, in sonnet number two, speaks of “mighty forests” having existed hereabout for thousands of years before archery or hunting became fashionable, and Dan Birkett, of whom more anon, declares that formerly a con (vulgarly called a squirrel), could hop from branch to branch all the way from the top of Wrynose to Millom Castle; the same tradition, I may remark, exists in the same form in other localities; for instance, it is averred that the aforesaid little animal, could, in the olden time, accomplish a similar aerial journey from Wythburn to Keswick, and also from Loweswater to the sea at Moresby. But perhaps the best of the sort is the tradition cherished by the descendants of one of the old Border clans, which asserts that some time before “the good old days of Adam and Eve” a moss trooper might ride in the shade of trees from the head of Annandale to the Solway, about thirty-five miles, and all upon land belonging to the Hallidays.

Take my word for it, the extent, duration, and number of these old forests are very much exaggerated. Let us take these hill sides as an instance. Where are the vestiges of a thick wood existing here for ages? Burnt, you may say!—Yes, but where is the rich loam inevitably produced by copious deposit of decayed vegetable matter WHAT THE SOIL SAYS.on dry situations, or the deep peat-moss that always betokens the former existence of timber in wet localities? Here, to your left, you perceive there has been a small land-slip—examine the soil exposed, and what do you find? Why, about a single inch of the soil created by vegetable growth and decay, just as much as the poor little mosses can make and no more, and a substratum of the tenacious reddish gravel locally called sammel; but no where do we see anything approaching to the thick superstratum of rich vegetable mould always discovered on the sites of primeval forests. No! no! where you cannot find either loam or peat-moss, be assured there has been at no period, however remote, any considerable covering of wood.