The Present Incumbent of Seathwaite—His Appearance, Manner, Conversation, and Preaching—A Contre-Temps—Causes of Defection—Undercrag—“A Vale within a Vale”—“The Old Church Clock”—“Bad Customs”—Country versus Town—Ascent of Walna Scar—Old British Camp?—View from the Summit and Descent of Walna Scar—Gaits Water and Dow Crags—Return to Conistone.

As you loiter about the church-yard, you will be inevitably saluted by an elderly personage arrayed in an elderly black coat, corduroy “never-mention-thems” ending at the knees, dark rough yarn stockings, by way of continuations, and strong country made shoes fastened with leather whangs. He has the appearance of one with whom the world has gone smoothly. His double chin, broad convex shoulders, “fair round belly with” fell mutton “lined,” sturdy, well-developed under-limbs, and, above all, the cheerful and benevolent expression pervading his venerable features, all indicate one whose lot in life has been peaceful, happy, and contented. His outer man would seem to fix his rank in life very little above the surrounding farmers and yeomen. His manner is simple, easy, and unaffected, and his style of language is vastly superior to that of any with whom you have exchanged words during your Seathwaite expedition. I may as well tell you who and what he is. Well, then, he is the Rev. Ed. Tyson, and a collateral descendant of the famous individual AN OBLIGING CICERONE.I told you so much about in our last chapter,—was, for a short time, his coadjutor, and, at his death, succeeded him in the ministry of this romantic chapelry. Ask him for how long he has watched over the spiritual interests of his unsophisticated flock, and he will answer “only forty-six years this time.” The “this time” means that, after acting as Mr Walker’s curate for some time, he left Seathwaite, and returned at his death in 1802. Forty-six years added to sixty-six, the duration of Robert Walker's ministration, gives the sum of one hundred and twelve years, during which the clerical function has been discharged in Seathwaite by only two individuals. To this, I fancy, you can scarcely find a parallel! Mr Tyson will have much pleasure in pointing out what is worthy of note in and about his chapel; as the pew lined with cloth of “Wonderful Walker's” own spinning, and again I may say that you will scarcely find a parallel to this in any English church—a pew lined with cloth spun by a clergyman! The pulpit is worth looking at on account of its antiquity, and so is the door of a cupboard beside it, both being of carved oak, and bearing a date which I forget.

One of the many writers who have chosen the Duddon for their theme, says that he has seldom witnessed anything so gratifying as the manner in which Mr Tyson greets his parishioners on a Sunday morning, as he passes through amongst the assembled groups in the church-yard. He might have increased his gratification by entering the church, and hearing the church service read in Mr Tyson's unpretending, but earnest and even affectionate style, and still more, by staying to hear one of his plain, practical, and convincing discourses, so perfectly adapted to the circumstances and understanding of his rustic congregation, and yet so good in their matter, so impressive in the manner of their delivery, and so excellent in their diction, composition, and arrangement of topics, that any congregation, the most polished and intellectual, might listen to them with the same pleasure and profit, as that with which they are evidently attended to by the simple-minded and uncultivated worshippers in Seathwaite. I have latterly made it a custom to go to Seathwaite once a year to hear Mr Tyson preach, which custom I mean to keep up, so long as I may be permitted.

I once witnessed a rather amusing scene occasioned by the plainness of Mr Tyson’s exterior. I had accompanied a gentleman from London on an excursion to Seathwaite, and introduced him to Mr Tyson, without thinking it requisite to mention his position in the parish, and noticed with some surprise, that whilst the worthy parson, with his usual ready kindness, was shewing us through the chapel, and pointing out the remarkables in its vicinity, my companion scarcely treated him with the consideration due to his rank, character, and profession; but my surprise increased almost to consternation, when the stranger, looking over his shoulder to our venerable Cicerone, asked very abruptly, “but, I say, who is the parson here?” Mr Tyson looked rather astonished for an instant, but immediately answered, with some little dignity, “I am the parson, sir—for want of a better.” The gentleman's hat was off directly, and, with a deep obeisance, a muttered apology was tendered to what he doubtless thought the clergyman’s insulted dignity.—“Yes, sir,” continued Mr Tyson, “I am the parson here, and if you calculated upon finding parsons in these dales dressed in black silk stockings and broad-cloth breeches, you see you have been mistaken!”

Miss Martineau says that Mr Tyson will tell the traveller “of the alteration in the times, and how the Wesleyans have opened a chapel in Ulpha, which draws away some of the flock; and that others have ceased to come to church since the attempts to get copper from the neighbouring hills,—the miners drawing away the people to diversion on Sundays.” I cannot help thinking that Miss Martineau has misunderstood the worthy pastor as to this latter cause of diminution in his congregation. The miners are certainly no more given to Sunday diversion than the rest of the community, and they have the less excuse for indulging in amusement on Sunday, inasmuch as they have more time for week-day recreation than their agricultural compeers. I cannot observe any difference between the manners and conduct of the miners and of the other inhabitants of Seathwaite, nor can I understand how any such difference can be supposed to exist, because all the people employed in the Seathwaite mines are natives of this or the adjoining vales—are, in fact, for the most part, sons or brothers of the small yeomen and farmers, and have taken to mining because it is an occupation that affords them better earnings for less work, than does agricultural or pastoral labour, their only other resources.

Bidding adieu to Seathwaite chapel, and to its venerable and obliging minister, you must return to Newfield for your pony, and set out on your way back to Conistone. You ride up the dale by the road you descended for about half a mile or more, and just before you reach the guide-post, where the road you came by turns off to cross Nettleslack Bridge, you had better leave the road, passing through a gate on your right, and following a track through a field for about forty yards, to take a look at the humble homestead of Undercrag, where Robert Walker was born. Though the buildings are of the humblest, the situation is very beautiful, nestling, as its name signifies, at the foot of a high wall of grey rock nearly perpendicular, but delightfully chequered with little slopes and irregular shelves of bright green turf. Undercrag has little about it to attract notice before many of its neighbours; its only claim to our attention is its being the birth-place of one, whose homely name has become known wider and farther than has that of any other native of the lake country, always excepting the name of his great biographer.

Leave Undercrag, and on regaining the highroad, instead of crossing the bridge to your left, and so returning upon your track, hold straight forward, and you soon enter a little circular basin of green fields, besprinkled with ancient cottages and farms, intersected with stone walls, and enlivened by two or three sparkling brooklets which meet in its centre. It reminds you of De Quincey's description of Easedale—“a chamber within a chamber, or rather a closet within a chamber—a chapel within a cathedral—a little private oratory within a chapel.” The houses in this little den are all within the sweep of the eye, and are easily enumerated; Hollin house, Tongue-house, Beck-house, Long-house, The Thrang, and—what next? Gibraltar!—each with

There is a little book bearing the odd title of “The Old Church Clock,” written by the Rev. Mr Parkinson, canon of Manchester, &c., which, possibly, you may have read. If you have, you may remark how strangely inaccurate the amiable author is in his local geography. To take one instance of many, he represents the sister of his hero to have the very reprehensible habit of slipping out of the paternal door, after bed-time, somewhere about the head of Yewdale, as near as I can fix it, and tripping it deftly over hill and dale, to meet her scamp of a sweetheart in this little dell. The said sweetheart must have been a very irresistible, as well as a very unreasonable personage, to entice a decent man’s daughter to enact the cart going to the horse, and give him the meeting so far from home—for the distance is little short of a round dozen of miles—and she is described as taking the rough, wild road that you have travelled over in this excursion. It is “rather of the ratherest,” and moreover, though this same custom of “meeting by night in the shady boreen” may suit a taste so romantic as that of the reverend author, it is not the custom of the daughters of these dales, who, with a careful regard for personal comfort and security from interruption, always have their wooers within the house after the family retire to rest; and I may quote Anderson, the Cumbrian bard, in support of the correctness of this statement, premising that the customs of this portion of Lancashire are, in all respects, similar to those in Cumberland and Westmorland. He says,—“A Cumbrian peasant pays his addresses to his sweetheart during the silence and solemnity of midnight, when every bosom is at rest, except those of love and sorrow. Anticipating her kindness, he will travel ten or twelve miles over hills, bogs, moors and mosses, undiscouraged by the length of the road, the darkness of the night, or the intemperature of the weather. On reaching her habitation, he gives a gentle tap at the window of her chamber, at which signal she immediately rises, dresses herself, and proceeds, with all possible silence, to the door, which she gently opens, lest a creeking hinge or a barking dog should awaken the family. * * Next the courtship commences, previously to which the fire is darkened or extinguished, lest its light should guide to the window some idle or licentious eye. In this dark and uncomfortable situation (at least uncomfortable to all but lovers), they remain till the advance of day,” and so on, concluding with some moralizing remarks upon this naughty custom, which I do not feel myself called upon to repeat. These “sittings,” which THE BALANCE OF MORALITY—WHERE? are in constant practice all over these northern counties, and which, after all, are not so bad as the Scotch and Welsh sweethearting customs, generally come off on the Saturday nights; and this practice, which involves the violation of the Sabbath, as well as the breach of decorum, is unnoticed, or rather winked at, by most writers who pretend to describe “life and manners” in the Lake country, such as Wilson, Wordsworth, De Quincey, and, lastly, Mr Parkinson. In fact, there appears a design amongst that tribe of writers to cry up the inhabitants of secluded districts such as these, at the expense of the inhabitants of towns. I am ready to do battle in this cause under the banner of Miss Martineau, who, in her triumphant answer to the arguments of those who opposed the introduction of railways into the Lake district, on the plea, amongst others equally absurd, that the morality of the people would suffer from contact with the denizens of towns, who, it was dreaded, would avail themselves in crowds of the increased facilities of transit, says—“As for the fear that the innocent rural population will be morally corrupted by intercourse with people from the towns, we have no apprehension of this, but are disposed to hope rather than fear certain consequences from the increased intercourse of the mountaineers with the people of large towns. We doubt at once the innocence of the one party, and the specific corruption of the other. Scarcely anything can be conceived more lifeless, unvaried, and unideal, than the existence of the dalesmen and their families; and where the intellect is left so idle and unimproved as among them, the sensual vices are sure to prevail. These vices rage in the villages and small towns; and probably no clergyman or justice of the peace will be ever heard speaking of the rural innocence of the region,—which is, indeed, to be found only in works of the imagination. The people have their virtues many and great.”—And so they have! but as to their morals being purer, or their lives and conversation more innocent than those of the parallel classes in towns, it is all nonsense. My life has been about equally divided between town and country, the nature of my occupation has given me much—I hope not wasted—opportunity in both of noting human nature en deshabille, and I tell you that good and evil in town and country, in crowded capital and lonely fell-dale, are “much of a muchness.” As a general rule, you may safely aver that the best educated community, is also the best behaved, and the standard of education amongst our mountaineers is by no means a high one.

But quitting this subject, on which one might prose till midnight, you had better commence the ascent of Walna Scar, and you’d also better gird up your loins, and make up your mind to encounter a labour of no ordinary magnitude; but as you rest and look back occasionally, the view rewards you well for your labour. Mr Wordsworth gives a very poetical and correct enumeration of the beauties of these prospects, but the passage has been quoted so often that you must have read it, and, therefore, though sorely tempted, I shall not give it here now. Part of Seathwaite beck comes leaping, frothing, and sparkling down a very rocky channel on your left. I think it is Captain Marryatt who describes an American river as forming “a staircase of waterfalls;” you have here this quaint fancy realized on a small scale for nearly half a mile along the side of your steep fell-road. On the farther side of this merry companion, is the extensive enclosure in which is situated Dan Birkett’s Town of “t'auld Ancient Britons.” The following instructions, furnished to me by a respected clerical friend, who is, in the ordinary pedestrian acceptation of the phrase, indisputably a “Wonderful Walker,” sufficed to enable me to find it out, and may serve your turn now. You will observe that he supposes the instructed party to be journeying from Conistone towards Seathwaite. “Follow the cart-road from Walna Scar to Seathwaite, till it meets the brook coming from the Peat-beds—turn to the right over the brook and wall, and march at right angles to your former course, upon some thorn trees distant about 500 yards. If the bogs are impassable, follow the Seathwaite road to the gate of the road leading to the Peat-beds, and there scramble over and among rocks to the above-mentioned thorn trees.”

I visited these remains with a member of the ArchÆological Association, and he expressed a decided opinion that they were a genuine antiquity, but thought they had formed a summer encampment, rather than a Town. On the other hand, a Seathwaite shepherd assured me that they were the ruins of a Peat-scale; that is, an erection for storing peats, until leisure serves to get them brought home. After a good hour’s climb, I must suppose you safely at the top of Walna Scar, and lost in admiration at the magnificent prospect you contemplate, when looking back to the north and west. The hill peering over the high ridge to your right, is Bowfell, then Great End, and next Scawfell Pikes and Scawfell, the highest hills in England. Those more distant, and seen over the western slope of Scawfell, are the Ennerdale hills, with the Pillar conspicuous amongst them, the scene of the fatal catastrophe in Wordsworth’s beautiful poem called “The Brothers.” Over the lower range of hills beyond Seathwaite, you may see the Isle of Man, the hills of Galloway, and Saint Bees Head, with the broad expanse of sea between them, glittering like ruddy gold in the red light of the declining sun. This huge arm of the mountains thrust out, as it seems, to shake hands with the sea, is Blackcombe, a well known land-mark for sailors. Under it, to the south, are extended the fertile fields of Millom, bounded again on the south by Duddon sands, over which LANDS, WATERS, AND ROCKS.the sea creeps up into the country, converting the bare sands twice every day into a broad area of water. The rich district of Low Furness divides the Duddon estuary from Morecambe Bay, which you may contemplate in all its vastness of extent and irregularity of shore. Stretching along the eastern horizon, are the hills of Yorkshire, the most conspicuous of which is Ingleborough. Nearer home, you behold the bright waters of Windermere, divided into three portions by intervening heights. And here nearer still, you have nearly the whole six miles of

with the beautiful valley of the Crake reaching from its foot to the sea at Greenodd.

You will find the descent of Walna Scar worse than the climb, for, on the Seathwaite side, the road is good and smooth, but, on the Conistone side, it is less like a road than a superannuated water-course, and that not of the “gentlest conditions.” After you have safely descended the steepest portions, and crossed by a primitive stone bridge over a brawling brook, pray leave your road for about half a mile, to look at Gaits Water. You will find it to present a scene of savage desolation approaching the terrific, and I know nothing equal to it for wildness in the Lake country. It is an oval Tarn, about half a mile round, on the eastern side of which the Old Man rears his most rocky and precipitous side; at the head is a steep, high pass, connecting the Old Man with Dow, or Dhu Crags, which last rise on its western side, high, barren, verdureless screes, surmounted by a coronet of tremendous black rocks, partly mural and partly columnar, of vast altitude, with rough jagged edges, and bisected here and there with awful-looking chasms, which, with the borrans formed by the accumulation of huge fragments of rock along the south-west of the shore, form a favourite DRAWING A FOX.harbour for foxes, against which the shepherds wage a constant war of extermination. They have an extraordinary method of taking the fox, when they trace him to one of these rocky hiding-places; they draw him out with a screw, like a cork from the neck of a bottle. They have a gigantic cork-screw upon the end of a pole, which they sometimes succeed in insinuating into poor reynard's corpus, and so ruthlessly screw him to destruction. On the three sides I have pointed out around Gaits Water, the walls of the dungeon come sheer down to the water-edge: the fourth is fortified with a grotesquely-piled accumulation of rocks of enormous size. Altogether, it is a scene to make a man shudder, and wish himself anywhere else;—so return to your road, and prick along under the southern slope of the Old Man to Conistone.

As you approach the village, you have a view of all the vale of Yewdale, shining sweetly in its setting of dark brown hills and moors. You reach Church Conistone by an abruptly-descending road, lined and over-arched by a long grove of flourishing oaks. Of the village itself, through a portion of which you take your way, we will say more anon; meantime, your mind’s eye is doubtless gloating upon the good things awaiting your attack at the Inn.