During a tour such as ours one becomes impressed that a large proportion of Britain is in barren moorlands or broken hills suitable only for sheep grazing—an impression made all the stronger by the diminutive size of the country. We in America can better afford our vast tracts of waste land; we have fertile river valleys from which dozens of Englands might be carved; but it seems almost melancholy that at least a third of the Kingdom, no greater in size than an average American state, should be almost as irreclaimable as the Sahara. One does not so much note this waste in railway travel, for the steam roads usually follow the valleys and lowlands, always green and prosperous, and naturally seek out the more populous centers. But the wagon road climbed steep hills and wended its way into many retired sections where the steam engine cannot profitably go, and the motor car has opened to tourists a hitherto almost unexplored country.

We were early away for Lakeland, and for miles and miles we traversed a rather inferior road through the moors and fells. Four or five miles out of Barnard Castle we passed through Bowes, a typical Yorkshire moorland town stretching some distance along the highroad. Though otherwise uninteresting enough, Bowes has one distinction of which it is far from proud, for here Charles Dickens found the school which served as the prototype of Dotheboys Hall in “Nicholas Nickleby.” The building, altered into a tenement house and its evil reputation disguised under the more pleasing name of “The Villa,” still stands at the western end of the town. In Dickens’ day it was known as Shaw’s School, and it seems that it deserved far less than many others of its class the overwhelming odium cast upon it in “Nicholas Nickleby”; and it is said that there still are people in Bowes who chafe at the injustice done their old-time townsman. But even if the Bowes school suffered some injustice, the purpose of Dickens was accomplished none the less in the reformation of the terrible juvenile workhouses which masqueraded as “schools.”

The moorland road carries us onward to Brough, a shabby, desolate town deep in the hills, with scarcely a touch of color to lighten its gray monotone. But this decayed village has its traditions; it was once famous through all England for its annual horse fair. They tell us that the fair is still held in Brough, though its fame has long since declined and it is now of only local interest.

At Appleby we enter the vale of the Eden, and bounding the western horizon we catch the first glimpse of the blue hills in whose deep depressions lie the English lakes. Appleby has a comfortable hotel, where we pause for lunch, and the appearance of the town is better and more prosperous than those we have recently passed. The square tower of the castle rises from an adjacent height and the church presents the remarkable spectacle of a hair dresser’s rooms occupying a portion of the ancient cloisters which open on the market place.

There is no finer highway in the north of England than the Carlisle road through Penrith. It pursues nearly if not quite the course of the old Roman road following the lowlands along the river—a broad white way which leads through a pleasant succession of fields and villages. We pass many ancient landmarks—on the left Brougham Castle, a red sandstone ruin splashed with ivy and creepers, and farther on to the right, Eden Hall, made famous by the ballad of Uhland.

Penrith is a busy town of ten thousand or more, seemingly improved since our visit of four years before, when it had no electric light plant. It is the starting-point for most Lake District excursions, whether by rail or coach. The railway follows the wagon road quite closely to Keswick and from thence one must have some other conveyance than rail to explore the region. And is it not well enough, for what impression worth while could one gain of Lakeland from a railway car?

From Keswick we turn southward over the hills, from whose summits the landscape—every hill and vale redolent with music and memories of the “Lakers”—stretches away beneath us, the lakes set in the valleys like great flashing gems. How familiar the odd names have been made by the poets of Lakeland! Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Borrowdale, Langdale Pikes and Fells, Rydal, Grasmere, and a hundred others—all call to mind the stanzas of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.

Our road sweeps up and down the hills along the sinuous shores of Thirlmere, certainly one of the most picturesque of the bright sisterhood of English lakes, but which now serves the very practical purpose of a source of water-supply for the city of Manchester, which acquired it by purchase. This transaction has aroused the indignation of a modern lake poet who falls little short of the best traditions of his illustrious predecessors and he makes vigorous protest against the cities whose “million-throated thirst” menaces the “sacred meres” of Lakeland. But the Manchester ownership—prosaic as it may be—has not detracted from the beauty of Thirlmere and many nuisances that once encumbered its shores have been abated.

But the human interest of the lakes centers around Grasmere and Rydal Water. Perchance Rydal and Grasmere and Dove Cottage are out of place in a chronicle of unfamiliar England, and yet who could write of the Lake District with no reference to the very attractions that have made it most famous? It is late as we pass the quaint old church “with bald bare tower” and pause at the cottage just off the highroad, where Wordsworth passed so many years in humble state that verged closely on poverty, as one would count it now. There is little of the picturesque in the gray-stone slate-roofed cottage, though the diamond-paned windows and the rose vines climbing to the eaves somewhat relieve the monotony of the square walls and the rude stone fence just in front. Like Shakespeare’s house, it is now the property of an association which insures its preservation in memory of the poet. It has been restored as nearly as possible to the same condition as during the occupancy of the Wordsworths, and the collection of books and other relics pertaining to them is being constantly increased.

It is easy for us to enter into the daily life of the poet as we pass through the small and rather rudely furnished rooms; and one must indeed be totally lacking in poetic instinct if he cannot feel at least a touch of sympathy with the pleasant surroundings so often the theme of the great laureate of the simple life. We sit in the rustic seat which Wordsworth was wont to occupy and can look over the gray roof of the cottage to the long succession of hills stretching away until their blue outlines are silhouetted against the sunset sky—verily an inspiration even to the most matter-of-fact intellect. We know that much of Wordsworth’s best work was composed in the little garden to the rear of the cottage—a bit of earth that he loved with an intensity that has found more than one expression in his written words. And it was of the very seat upon which we sit that he wrote:

But to know more of the simple, happy life at Dove Cottage, one may read from the letter written by Dorothy in 1800:

“We are daily more delighted with Grasmere and its neighborhood. Our walks are perpetually varied, and we are more fond of the mountains as our acquaintance with them increases. We have a boat upon the lake, and a small orchard and smaller garden, which, as it is the work of our own hands, we regard with pride and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though very small; and we have made it neat and comfortable within doors; and it looks very nice on the outside; for though the roses and honeysuckles which we have planted against it are only of this year’s growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and scarlet flowers; for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful but very useful, as their produce is immense. We have made a lodging-room of the parlor below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one lodging-room with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a small low unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed.”

But come! We may not stop at Dove Cottage for the night; it would now offer but sorry cheer, and Windermere seems the most available place to tarry. We pass close to the water’s edge along Grasmere, and Rydal brings up new associations of the poet—here on the “Mount” overlooking the tiny lake is the house where Wordsworth lived in his later and more prosperous years, still the home of his granddaughter, we are told. But the tripper is not welcome and the envious tangle of trees and shrubbery denies to the wayfarer even a glimpse of the house.

The beautiful situation of the Lowwood Hotel attracts our attention as we follow the margin of the lake, but we pass on in our swift race for Windermere. Coming thither we inquire of a policeman in the market place for the best hotel. He is diplomatic enough to disclaim fitness to judge, but adds confidentially, “You’ll make no mistake if you go to the Hold Hengland; that’s where the quality goes.” We thank him—praise Heaven that is all one is expected to do, or in fact, may do for a policeman in Britain!—but when we view the Old England we are seized with regret that we passed Lowwood with its magnificent frontage on the lake. It is nothing to retrace the half dozen miles to the most pretentious hotel in the Lake District, though probably far from the most comfortable, and certainly anything but the place for travelers of an economical turn. What motorist could forget or forgive the charge of half a crown for simple garage—two and one-half times the standard price in England! Still, the view of the lake from Lowwood as the evening falls compensates for many shortcomings. The twilight has transformed the limpid waters into a sheet of dull silver, touched with faint rose hues from the last glow of the sun. The hills beyond stand in dark blue outline against a pale opalescent sky and the dim gray towers of Wray Castle rear their massive bulk in the foreground. There is no more enchanting view from the shores of Windermere Lake and we saw it under the most favorable conditions.

A sharp change has come over the scene when we resume our journey in the morning. A light rain is falling and the mist hovering over the lake half hides the distant hills. Gray tones predominate everywhere, contrasting cheerlessly with the brilliance of the preceding day. But such a day may be looked for as the rule rather than the exception, for the rainfall of the Lake District is much the heaviest in England. We pass Ambleside at the head of the lake, and follow the steep, ill-kept road, slippery from the rain, to Coniston, a very quiet village, nestling at the foot of the great hills at the head of Coniston Water. In the churchyard here John Ruskin was laid to rest—a Celtic cross marks the spot—and a museum in the town contains many of his sketches and manuscripts. The road southward closely follows Coniston Water, though with many slight but sharp undulations, winding through a dense growth of young trees. We pass directly under Brantwood, the plain old house where Ruskin lived, and catch glimpses of the oriel window of leaded glass in which he was wont to sit at his work. The house is situated on a wooded hillside and commands a fine view of the lake. The road from Brantwood to the end of the lake is so narrow, so tortuous and so obscured by the trees that extreme caution is necessary. It is still early and the way is quite clear; we experience no trouble, yet we are glad indeed to get into the main road to Dalton and Ulverston.

Furness Abbey, once neglected and rather inaccessible, has more recently become one of the best known and most easily reached of the historic spots of northern England. Among the multifarious activities of the late Duke of Devonshire, was the building of the railroad that leads to Barrow-in-Furness and the development of that town into an important port of sixty thousand inhabitants. A few miles north of the town are the extensive ruins of Furness Abbey, a Cistercian foundation of the twelfth century, situated in a narrow valley underneath overshadowing hills from which the red sandstone used in the building was taken. The keen business sense of the duke recognized in this splendid ruin a decided factor to assist in his plan of development. The grounds surrounding the abbey were converted into a handsome park, a station was opened on the railroad just opposite, and a large hotel was built near by.

Furness Abbey, however, carefully groomed and in charge of voluble guides posted in the minutest detail of architecture and history, can hardly impress one as it did when, a lonely and crumbling ruin, it was the goal of only the infrequent visitor. Its story is a long one but of interest only to the specialist or antiquarian. To the layman the tales of the different abbeys seem wonderfully alike: founded in religious zeal, a period of penury, then of prosperity, and finally one of great power and affluence. Then came the quarrel of Henry VIII. with Rome and through the activity of the king’s agents the abbeys were plundered and partially destroyed. The direct damage inflicted by the looters was usually limited to tearing the lead from the roofs, smashing the windows, and defacing the tombs. Then followed the long ages of neglect and the decay consequent upon the rains of summer and the storms of winter. But more than all other causes that contributed to the ruin and sometimes complete effacement of the magnificent abbey buildings, was the vandalism that converted them into stone walls and hovels—every one became the neighborhood quarry and in many instances we owe the fragments that remain to the solidity that made tearing down a difficult task.

Furness Abbey is well worth a visit. While only fragments of its walls remain, excavations have been made with such care and intelligence that one has the whole groundwork of the great establishment before him and may gain from it an excellent idea of monastic life. With the sole exception of Fountains, it is probably the most extensive monastic ruin in Britain, and while it lacks much of the beauty and impressiveness of its Yorkshire rival, it serves to give one a better insight into the daily life of the ancient occupants. Judged by our standard, it must have been a rigorous, cheerless life, though it probably contrasted more favorably with conditions of its own time. There is today a growing belief that, on the average, the life of the monks was not so easy nor so corrupt as apologists for the ruthless despoilation of the abbeys would have us think.

I have consumed in these vagaries the space that I should have devoted to the description of the abbey; but descriptions are easy to be had and the best of them will fall short of the interest and beauty that awaits the visitor to the charming Lancashire ruin. One may well stay a day at the hotel, than which there are few in England more comfortable, more beautifully located, or better in appointment.

We have covered three thousand miles in our wanderings and a certain weariness possesses us. We feel that a rest of a day or two will not come amiss, and no place within reach appeals to us as old York. To our notion the resort towns with their ostentatious hotels—Harrogate and Ilkley are nearer—cannot compare with the cathedral city and its Station Hotel as a place where one may be at ease. The Station, with its unpretentious and prosaic name, is the property of the railway company, a great rambling building of yellow brick, unhampered by limitations of space and so arranged that every guest-room has light and air from the outside. There are spacious and finely kept grounds in front and at some distance to the rear is the station, but not close enough to disturb the quiet of the hotel.

But York is full two days’ journey at our rate of traveling; there is much to see on the way and our route will be anything but a direct one. We leave Furness Abbey in the early afternoon and the skies, which had cleared as we reached Coniston, are lowering again. The road by which we came carries us to Ulverston, and from thence we soon come to Lake Side, at the lower end of Windermere. The fine road to the north closely skirts the lake, but the trees stand so thickly that we catch only occasional glimpses of the water. A light summer shower is falling, and the fleeting sun and shadow over the mirrorlike surface, mottled with patches of gleaming blue and almost inky blackness, gives us another of the endless phases of the beauty of Lakeland. For seven or eight miles we keep close to the shore, through Bowness to Windermere, two quiet little towns largely given over to hotels and lodging-houses. The great vogue of the Lake District as a resort is comparatively recent, and as a consequence one finds in these towns a mingling of the ancient and modern. Windermere, which grew out of the little village of Birthswaite, is especially accessible, being reached in about an hour by train from Manchester.

Kendal, the county town of Westmoreland, is only seven or eight miles from Windermere. Once a manufacturing center of importance, famous for its woolens and “Kendal Green,” it has been gradually transformed into a quiet, unprogressive market town. The King’s Arms Hotel is one of the most typical and interesting of the old-time buildings. It abounds in narrow hallways, odd corners, beamed ceilings and paneled rooms, all behind a very common and unpretentious exterior. We have noted many narrow alleys leading into the main street and some of these still have heavy gates at the entrance. We are told that Kendal suffered from frequent incursions of the Scots during the almost endless years of border strife, and these alleys afforded quick refuge for the citizens of the town. The gates were closed and the marauders thus confined to the main street, where they became easy targets for the men behind the barriers. But no such exciting incident breaks the sleepy quiet of Kendal today, though the scene before us is not without animation. It is market day and the streets are thronged with farmers from the prosperous valley in which the town is situated. Cattle, sheep and produce seem to be the chief topics of conversation so far as we can gather from snatches of the broad North Country dialect of the men about the town.

Our stay at Kendal is a short one—we are soon away for the

So Wordsworth describes the narrow green valleys running between the long ridges of moorland hills and opening into the wide fertile plain in the center of which stands the city of York.

We drop southward for some little distance and then turn to the east, through the very heart of the hills. Just before we come to Settle, our attention is attracted by a group of people looking curiously into a stone trough by the wayside. There are expressions of disappointment—“It’s not working today.” We are told that this is Settle’s ebbing and flowing well, famous over all Yorkshire and concerning which a learned antiquary has written a book. But the well is out of commission today—the long drouth has affected the spring until for the second time in the last twenty-five years the phenomenon has ceased. Ordinarily there is a regular ebb and flow of the waters at intervals of from five to fifteen minutes. It is known that this strange spring has been in existence for hundreds of years, but the phenomenon has never been satisfactorily explained.

A little farther we find a striking instance of how a bad name will linger long after its original significance has vanished; for Hellifield was once Hell-in-the-Field, because of its reputation for wickedness. But surely this straggling little village hardly looks its formidable cognomen today. A few miles on the Skipton road brings us in view of a strangely incongruous spectacle; on one of the rough hills an oriental temple stands with huge dome and slender minarets sharply outlined against the evening sky—a sight that almost savors of enchantment in such surroundings. But it is real enough, for an eccentric Londoner who embraced Buddhism some years ago, spent a fortune in erecting this temple on the bare northern hills.

Skipton is near the head of Airedale, but we see here no sign of the multitudinous factories that taint the skies and sully the waters farther down the Aire, which, if one were to follow it for twenty-five miles, would take him through the heart of Leeds. But Skipton is only a market town—fairly prosperous, for the narrow vale which surrounds it is famed as one of the richest pastoral bits of Yorkshire. The fading light accentuates the gray monotone of the old houses, and gives a further touch of cheerlessness to the somewhat bleak aspect of the place. The large market square is paved with cobblestones and around it in promiscuous array stand public and business buildings, among them two hotels, large but rather unprepossessing structures. A hurried glance at the interior of each confirms our first impressions and we bid Skipton a hasty farewell. We pass under the high walls of the old castle to reach the Ilkley road. The grim gateway is flanked by two huge embattled round towers and the walls are pierced by small mullioned windows. Skipton Castle was once the stronghold of the Cliffords, and some say the birthplace of Fair Rosamond, rather than the almost vanished castle on the Welsh Wye, which also claims the distinction—if indeed it be such. It is wonderfully well preserved—few other Yorkshire castles can vie with it in this particular—and stands today as sullen and proud as it must have seemed when the wars of the Roses swept over the land.

A narrow upland road bordered by stone fences and leading through bleak hills carries us over the moorland ridge that lies between Airedale and Wharfdale, and on entering the latter, the comfortable-looking Devonshire Arms stands squarely across our way. We find it a quiet, pleasant place, seemingly half inn and half home for the family of the genial landlord. It is situated near the entrance to the grounds of Bolton Abbey and its pretty gardens to the rear slope down to the rippling Wharfe. The inn is the property of the Duke of Devonshire, to whom the abbey grounds belong, and as he was averse to Sunday visitors at the abbey, the hotel is licensed as a “six-day house.” No one may be taken in and no meal served to anyone not already a guest, on Sunday. When we left the hotel we did not expect to return, and by paying our bill practically gave up our status as guests of the Devonshire Arms. But it chanced that we were back in time for lunch and a serious discussion took place between our landlord and his assistants as to whether we might be accommodated or not. It was finally decided to stretch a point in our favor and to assume that we had not severed our relations when we left in the morning.

A desire possesses us to see something of the most retired portions of the Yorkshire moors and from Skipton we start due north over the hills. We pass Rylstone, the tiny village given to fame by Wordsworth in his ballad, “The White Doe of Rylstone,” and re-enter Wharfdale at Grassington. The unbroken moors stretch northward on either side of the river—a country quite devoid of roads excepting the indifferent ones on each side of the Wharfe—to the village of Kettlewell. We follow the right-hand road, narrow, steep and winding, and altogether a severe test for a motor. Fortunately it is quite clear, for in many places vehicles could scarcely pass each other. Nothing could be harsher and bleaker than the country, even as we saw it in the prime of summer time, and the little towns seem almost a part of the country itself. It would be hard to imagine that there was ever a time when Grassington, Coniston or Kettlewell did not nestle, angular and weather-beaten, at the foot of the eternal hills, and they are as bare and as devoid of the picturesque touches of the village of southern England as the hills they lie beneath. They seem to have little excuse for existence and it is not clear to a casual visitor how the lonely moors that encircle them can afford sustenance to their inhabitants. Lead-mining once employed many people, though at present most of the mines are exhausted. Kettlewell is in the very center of the moor; no railroad comes within many miles of the town. It lies along a narrow valley—a mere cleft in the hills—that opens into Wharfdale, which itself becomes very narrow here. It is a center for those who would explore the mysteries of the surrounding moors or who desire to hunt or fish in almost primal solitude. That there are many such visitors is attested by the rather good-looking inns at Kettlewell, and altogether, the village seems less forlorn than the others we have just passed. The place is not as quiet as one would expect from its retired location; coaches are discharging their loads of trippers and evidently do a thriving business.

One might find it very interesting to continue northward to Askrigg, another old and quaint moorland town, and from this to visit Wensleydale—which we do later—but our present plans do not contemplate this. The road is a very indifferent one, though probably not much worse than that over which we came. Returning from Kettlewell we take the opposite side of the Wharfe, passing at first close to the river and then beneath gray and red cliffs that ominously overhang the road. From the hill-crests at times we have wide panoramas of the dale, with the silver ribbon of the Wharfe stealing through it. The road takes us back to the village of Grassington; from thence we follow a road whose steep hills and sharp turns engage the closest attention of the driver until we reach the Devonshire Arms, as before related.

A short cut across Rumbles Moor brings us to the road to Keighley, the last link in the chain of manufacturing towns stretching up the Aire from Leeds and which we must pass to reach Haworth, a name that suggests to anyone conversant with English letters the gifted but unfortunate Bronte family. Haworth has no doubt been influenced in population and activity by its busy neighbor, Keighley, but the “four tough scrambling miles” that Charles Dickens found on his visit a third of a century ago still lie between. The whole distance is a continual climb, terminating at the top of the hill, to which the old town seems to cling rather precariously. Indeed, there were few more forbidding ascents that confronted us than this terribly steep, rough street—so steep that the paving stones have been set on edge to enable the horses to climb it. It is bordered with old-world buildings, gray and weather-beaten, and forms a fit avenue to the church that dominates the town from the hill and whose massive square tower looks far over the desolate moorlands beyond it. We visited hundreds of ancient churches in England and the surroundings of many were somber and even depressing, but surely none approached Haworth churchyard in the deep, all-pervading gloom that hovered over the blackened and thickly clustered gravestones and dimmed the very sunlight that struggled through the trees which encircle the place. The hilltop is given up to the churchyard and there seems to be scarcely room for another grave, so thickly stand the mouldering memorials, which mostly antedate the time of the Brontes. Out beyond, to the westward, lie the wild black and purple moors, sweeping away even higher than the church itself and ending in a long wave of hills rippling darkly against the horizon.

When “Jane Eyre,” published in 1847, astonished the literary world, few indeed would have guessed that the humble authoress lived in this lonely village, then by far lonelier and more remote than it is today; and it is still a wonder how one with such surroundings and of such limited experience was able to fathom life so deeply. But one need not be at a loss to account for the strain of melancholy that runs through the writings of the gifted sisters. The isolated, dreary village, the church and rectory, then almost ruinous, the desolate moor lands and the family tragedy—the only son dying an irreclaimable drunkard—might furnish a background of gloom even for Wuthering Heights. The sisters rest in early graves, Charlotte, the eldest, dying last, in 1855, at the age of thirty-nine. All, together with the father and unhappy brother, are buried in Haworth churchyard save Anne, who lies in St. Mary’s at Scarborough.

Haworth has shared the growth in population that has filled Airedale with manufacturing towns and is now a place of some eight thousand people. It delights to honor the memory of its distinguished daughters, and the local Bronte Club has established a museum containing many interesting relics, manuscripts, and rare editions.

Retracing our route to Wharfdale, we follow the fine road through Ilkley and Otley into the broad green lowlands which surround Old York. There is no more beautiful country in England than that through which we course swiftly along. We catch continual vistas of the Wharfe, no longer a brawling moorland stream, but sleeping in broad, silvery reaches in the midst of the luxuriant meadows. We leave the river road for Harrogate, pause a few moments to renew our acquaintance with quaint old Knaresborough, and from thence we glide over twenty miles of perfect road into York.