Professor Wilson says, that when “you come in sight of the Lake of Conistone, the prospect is at once beautiful and sublime,” and “you will acknowledge that Conistone can almost bear a comparison with Windermere.” And even he admits elsewhere, that it surpasses Windermere in the quality of its char!—perhaps, to most people, the highest praise he can give it.
Another equally experienced, though not equally eminent gastronome, declares its black-faced mutton to be incomparably the best ever boiled.
Professor Sedgwick, in his “Geology of the Lake District,” names Conistone thrice for any other locality once.
Experienced and successful mining adventurers class it A1., on account of its underground wealth.
A BOLD DEDUCEMENT
Dr Charles Mackay says that Conistone Water is “the most placid of all the lakes.”
Thomas de Quincey, the English opium-eater, speaking of the view of Conistone from the road near Tarn Hows, says—“to which, for a coup de theatre, I know nothing equal.”
A talented artist of indisputable taste says, that no other vicinity affords such an abundance of subjects for fine pictures.
The rain-gauge states, that scarcely one-half of the rain falls here that falls at Keswick, (where, by the bye, Lord Byron makes a devil say it usually rains).
Last and best, Miss Martineau says, the traveller “has probably never beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm; of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest beauty.”