The English Lakes

A MISTY MORNING, NEWBY BRIDGE, WINDERMERE
AGENTS IN AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
First Edition July , 1905 Second Edition October , 1908
The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed in England by the Hentschel Colourtype Ltd.
The present book, it must be understood, treats the English Lakes rather apart from various other elements comprised in what is known as the Lake District. There is so much to say of the waters and their immediate surroundings that no space has remained to describe mountain, pass, and tarn in the manner their beauties merit. Other limits to the book are due to the writer’s promiscuity of taste. I am interested in most things—antiquities, fauna, flora, sports, geology, entomology, and the like; but in not one of these subjects have I that erudite knowledge which might render my work of profit. This book is written to interest those who love out-of-doors without claiming any particular study there. Of the paintings—I can only commend them to notice. In my humblest manner I assert that only an artist who feels the beauty of his environment thoroughly could produce work so stamped with the innate character of our Lakeland.
Of the history of the English Lakes little need be said. We are in a backwater, so to speak, of events; only the outer edges of great affairs have touched us. The mountains have been the last home of the invaded after their defeat in the field and their banishment from the accessible level lands. Druidical, and perhaps more ancient, remains are plentiful, along with relics of Roman, Norseman, and Saxon; but these at best only evidence sparse occupation. So far as history shows, no really great campaign has been fought out in our wilds—the battlefield of Dunmail (and only legend fixes that) is almost the only extensive one within the heart of the fell country. Great religious changes—the Dissolution of Monasteries, the Reformation, the rise of Nonconformity—have been far more striking in their results than ever were the fortunes of war. The mountains of Lakeland and Scotland stand blue on a common horizon, and the alarms and reprisals of Border feud were not unknown. But the hardy warriors from nor’ward did not often risk operations here, where conditions were so unfavourable to their feverish but unsustained method of warfare. The Civil War brought strife between the squires, but no great action was fought, yet in outlying districts the name of Cromwell is not forgotten in weird tale. Though the land of the Lakes has been free from war in the sense of great happenings, it has been far from a peaceful country.