WORT AND WELCOME.
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.
WRYNOSE.
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.”—
“SORDID INDUSTRY.”
I.