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.
“A PEACEFUL RETIREMENT.”
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
“A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground,
Masses of every shape and size that lie
Scattered about beneath the mouldering wall
Of the rough precipice, and some apart,
In quarters unobnoxious to such chance,
As if the moon had rained them down in spite.”