Little Langdale—Blea Tarn—Great Langdale—Langdale Pikes—Wallend—Mill-beck—Dungeon Ghyll—Chapel Stile—Langdale Church-yard—Elterwater—Hackett—Colwith and Colwith Force—Tarn Hows—Finale.

Quitting the slate quarries, you follow the road by which you formerly travelled on your way to the classic Duddon, till you reach the stream separating Lancashire from Westmorland. You now cross this stream at the point where you approach it, and at once enter Little Langdale, up which the road takes you past “the New Houses,” Birk How, “Langden Jerry,” The Busk, and Langdale Tarn, all of which have been noticed either collectively or separately, on a previous occasion. After winding by a rough ascending road, half way round the mountain range called Lingmoor, you arrive at Blea Tarn, which, to quote the Professor, is “a lonely, and if in nature there be anything of that character, a melancholy piece of water!” It is thus finely described in Mr Wordsworth’s Excursion, as the abode of his Solitary:

‘What!’ methinks we hear a voice exclaim—‘Is that a description of bare, dull, dreary, moorland Blea-Pond, where a man and a Christian would die of mere blank vacancy, of weary want of world, of eye and ear?’ Hush, critic, hush! forget you that there are sermons in stones, and good in everything? In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if his imagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over the objects of the inanimate world?”

It is indisputable that the poet must possess something that may be called “a transmuting power” of vision, for to the unpoetical optics of any “worthy man of prose,” like you or me, Blea Tarn is much more like a platter than “an urn.” Once upon a time, I—even I myself—in a very sentimental mood, perpetrated a sonnet upon Blea Tarn, and, if you can tolerate such enormity, here it is:

It is no longer, nor has it been, for many years, a “treeless nook,” for the “one abode” is now shaded by a sycamore or two, and the hill-side beyond the tarn is covered with Mr Wordsworth’s most especial aversion, an extensive plantation of fine larches, which were planted, I suppose, by Dr Watson, the venerated Bishop of Llandaff, in the possession of whose representatives the place still remains. For miles hereabouts the scenery partakes largely of the Blea-tarn character, and were it not for the house, the road, the little fields and the intruding larches, there were nothing to indicate that the hand or foot of man has been there. It is not until you are descending a steep hill towards Wall-end, that the fertile meadows, the flourishing trees, the hedge-rows and the homesteads of Great Langdale, and the magnificent Pikes towering beyond them, neutralize the effect of the dreary scene you are emerging from. But in introducing you to Great Langdale, I am glad to resign my office to a much more efficient and eloquent cicerone—so attend to him:—“Promise not to lift your eyes from your ponies' ears, till we cry 'eyes forward'! We wish you to enjoy the soul-uplifting emotion of instantaneous magnificence. There, honest Jonathan, hold the gate open till the cavalry get through; and now,——behold the Vale of Great Langdale! There is no lake in that depth profound—the glittering sunshine hides a cloud of rich enclosures, scattered over with single trees; and, immediately below your feet, a stately sycamore-grove shrouding the ancient dwelling of Wall-end. Ay, your dazzled eyes begin now to discern the character of the vale, gradually forming itself into permanent order out of the wavering confusion. That thread of silver is a stream! Yonder seeming wreath of snow a waterfall! No castles are these built by hands, but the battlements of the eternal cliffs! There you behold the mountains, from their feet resting on the vale as on a footstool, up to their crests in the clear blue sky! And what a vast distance from field to cloud! You have been in Italy, and Spain, and Switzerland,—say, then, saw ye ever mountains more sublime than the Langdale Pikes?”

After passing Wall-end, you are fairly upon the floor of the vale of Langdale, and crossing its fertile fields by a tolerable road, and the other branch of the Brathay by an equally tolerable bridge, you follow the road rather down the vale, till you reach the farm house of Mill-beck, where you must stable your steed, whilst you scramble about a quarter of a mile up the fell to look at Dungeon Ghyll. Arrived at the entrance of this famous “rock-dungeon,” where Coleridge says “three wicked sextons’ souls are pent,” and occasionally make a terrible rumpus with “bells of rock and ropes of air,” the devil answering “to the tale with a merry peal from Borrowdale,” you descend by a rude, but stout ladder into the watercourse. After clambering over some rather impracticable rocks, you obtain a full view of the fall, and declare it to be an ample recompense for your journey, had it been five times as toilsome. A perpendicular wall of solid rock rises on each side, scarcely three yards apart, to the height of one hundred feet. At the inner extremity of the chasm, about fifty yards from its external opening, and directly opposite to you as you enter, the water rushes in one clear unbroken fall, from a height of ninety feet, into a deep circular basin, whence a lamb, which had been dashed over the fall without injury, was rescued from drowning by Mr Wordsworth, to await the legitimate fate of all lambs, they, like many of the human species, “being destined to a drier death on shore.” The most curious feature of Dungeon Ghyll is two huge rocks, which appear to have been rolling down simultaneously from the Pikes above, and to have met and jammed together across the top of the chasm, forming a bridge, which it is a favourite feat with adventurous spirits to cross over, and which, in its “contempt of danger and accommodation,” might almost seem to have been placed there to gratify the peculiar taste in bridges of the lamb’s benevolent preserver.

There are various opinions on the momentous question of what is the best weather for visiting falls such as this of Dungeon Ghyll. One eminent lover and describer of mountain scenery, says:—“To our liking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, the noise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified, till your head splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn door, and roar into a friend’s ear all in vain a remark on the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are as completely drenched in spray, as if you had fallen out of a boat—and descend to dinner with a tooth-ache that keeps you in starvation in the presence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dry weather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead of tumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why it slides and slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whose foam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headache have you—speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellent observation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dew-drops have been shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap of the cushat—and as for tooth-ache interfering with dinner, you eat as if your tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discuss nuts, upper- and lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in the country.”

I have the temerity to hold the opposite opinion on this “momentous question.” Some idea of the grounds on which I found that opinion, may be gathered from the following rhyming epistle, in which, “long, long ago,” I essayed to give a distant friend an account of a winter excursion to Dungeon Ghyll:—

When you have had enough of Dungeon Ghyll, descend the mountain side, return to Mill-beck, re-mount your pony, and canter down the vale past pretty farm houses, green fields, and slate-quarries, to Chapel Stile, where my esteemed friend, Mrs Tyson, the youthful and blooming landlady, will unexceptionably administer to your physical wants, which, no doubt, are becoming importunate, whilst her husband will pay equal attention to the requirements of your pony.

Having refreshed to your satisfaction in Mrs Tyson's best parlour, where the furniture of ancient oak bears such a polish as might tempt you to re-enact the story of Narcissus, you may proceed to examine the church yard, for here, again, the house of prayer and the house of refreshment are in juxta-position. In this little mountain burial-place, you will find, under a yew tree, a plain tombstone erected to the memory of a late incumbent—the Rev. Owen Lloyd, son of Mr Charles Lloyd, of Old Brathay, who was the early and life-long friend of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth—a participator, I believe, in the much-ridiculed scheme of Pantisocrasy—an accomplished scholar, and an elegant, though little known, writer. You may find a very interesting sketch of his history and character in De Quincey’s papers on Lake Society, and to that I must refer you. On the humble tombstone of his excellent, but unhappy son, you may read the following epitaph, which, I need not tell you, is by “the aged poet, whose residence is the crowning honour of the district”:

If post mortem poetical panegyric be a proof of the affection with which the subject has been regarded through life, (and why should it not?) Owen Lloyd must have enjoyed no ordinary share of the love and esteem of his neighbours and friends, for his early death is the subject, in addition to Mr Wordsworth’s epitaph, of three other sets of elegiac verses, viz., by Mr Hartley Coleridge, Mr Ball, of Glen Rotha, and Mr —— Lloyd, his surviving brother. Mr Hartley Coleridge’s verses are scarcely worthy of his name, though they certainly contain some striking stanzas, as this,—referring to his school days:—

And these,—to a later period of life, when the gloom that darkened his latter days was appearing:—

These must serve as a specimen of Hartley Coleridge's dozen stanzas. Mr Ball’s are remarkable only as containing the following tolerable Irishism:—

His brother’s verses I have not seen, and having devoted more time to this subject than you may approve of, you had better now return to your inn—pay your moderate bill, and set out, passing the Elterwater powder works, and through the straggling village of that name—take a glance at the tarn with its reedy shores, and pushing on, you pass, unseen, far up on the height to your right hand, the farm houses called Hacket, formerly the residence of old Betty Yewdale, the heroine of one of the best passages in the “Excursion.” I allude to that in the fifth book, where the sage and eloquent wanderer describes his having been benighted amongst the hills—

But making for this light, he finds a matron

As you have read “The Excursion,” or, if not, intend to correct that sin of omission without further delay, I need not quote farther. But I should tell you that the same Betty Yewdale also figures as the heroine of a section of that strange book “The Doctor,” or rather, I should say, she is the narrator of the chapter, for it was taken down from her own lips, and in her own language, by “the Doctor's” daughter, Miss Southey, and a friend. It is called “A true story of the terrible knitters i’ Dent”—is by far the best specimen of our local dialect that I know, and in truth to nature, interest of narrative, and as a picture of manners, is infinitely superior to the only production at all resembling it—the well-known “Borrowdale letter.” I must recommend it to you as well worthy a careful perusal, giving you the following short extract as a whet. She and her sister, I must premise, had been sent from Langdale to Dent, when she was “between sebben an’ eight year auld, and Sally twea year younger,” and tiring of the mode of living and the incessant knitting at Dent, which are most graphically described, they ran away. She gives a minute detail of their three days’ journey, and continues:—“It was quite dark afore we gat to Ammelside yat—our feet warr sair, an’ we warr naarly dune for—an’ when we turnt round Windermer Watter heead t'waves blasht sea dowly that we warr fairly heart-brossen. We sat down on a cauld steean an’ grat sair—but when we hed hed our belly full o’ greeting, we gat up an’ dreed on agean—slaw enough, ye may be sure, but we warr i’ kent rwoads.——We began ta be flayet at my fadder an’ mudder wad be angert at us for running away. It was tweea o'clock in t’ mwornin’ when we gat to our awn duir. I ca’d out ‘Fadder, fadder! Mudder, mudder!’ ower an’ ower agean. She hard us, an’ sed ‘That’s our Betty voice!’ ‘Thou’s nowt but fancies, lig still,’ sed my fadder—but she waddent, an’ sea gat up an’ open’t duir, an’ thear warr we stannin’ dodderin’ an’ daized wi’ cauld, as nar deead as maks nea matter. When she so us she was warr flay’t than we,—she brast out a crying, an’ we grat, an’ my fadder grat an’ o', an’ they duddent flyte nor sed nowt tull us for running away.”

You soon arrive at Colwith, where you may stop to inspect the force. It is, in my opinion, one of the finest forces in the country, possessing by far the largest body of water, with a fall, or rather a succession of falls, of 152 feet, very much broken and frothed up by jutting interruptions of rock. Its immediate environs are prettily wooded, and it is seen to most advantage from below. When you cross Colwith Bridge, you are again in Lancashire, and in rather a dreary portion of that important county. You have no houses for miles, except the two farms of Arnside, which stand unseen in “dual loneliness” upon the wild moor to the left, and those of Oxenfell over the heights on your right.

As you descend towards Yewdale by the alder-fringed brook, you may notice a large enclosure of birches, which fully justify Mr Wordsworth’s preference; for it is difficult to name a deciduous tree that is prettier in all seasons than the birch, with its tremulous foliage in summer, and its flea-coloured twigs and its grey-coloured stem in winter. One cannot help regretting that the twigs of such a handsome tree should come to such base uses at last!

As you approach the head of Yewdale, the scenery gradually assumes an aspect of the most varied loveliness. When you enter the vale of Yewdale, take the steep road to the left over Tarn Hows; but Mr De Quincey is here a much better cicerone than I, and he says,—“Taking the left-hand road, so as to make for Monk Conistone, and not for Church Conistone, you ascend a pretty steep hill, from which, at a certain point of the little gorge, or hawse (i. e. hals, neck or throat, viz., the dip in any hill through which the road is led), the whole lake, of six miles in length, and the beautiful foregrounds, all rush upon the eye with the effect of a pantomimic surprize—not by a graduated revelation, but by an instantaneous flash.”

You descend by the road winding through Mr Marshall's beautiful grounds, until you reach the road from Ambleside. You are now very near your excellent head quarters, and my ravings and your ramblings are equally near a happy conclusion; so trusting you will drink your first bumper after dinner to our next merry meeting, I bid you, most affectionately, adieu.

FINIS.

GEORGE LEE, PRINTER, KENDAL.