THE LAKE-FOOT.
You pass Sunny-bank, its pretty farm, its bridge and bobbin mill, and return to the lake-side below the mouth of Torver beck, and opposite to “the Gridiron,” and ride on through the farm-yard of Oxness, past Brown How, near to which a very handsome mansion has just been built upon a singularly beautiful site by the lake side. The scenery here is very picturesque, consisting, as it does, of successive but irregular precipitous ranges of grey rock—in some parts bare, and in others clad with a heavy drapery of glittering ivy—separated by intervals of purple heather, or green brackens and greener pasturage.
You are now near the water-foot, and just before you reach the hamlet of Water-yeat, stop on a little eminence and enjoy a view, one glimpse of which, I have been told, would be ample compensation for a journey from Timbuctoo. The whole length of the lake lies spread out before you, from the Copper sheds at Nibthwaite to the Inn at Waterhead, which last, though at six miles’ distance, is very distinctly seen—beautifully backed up by the slopes and woods of Mr Marshall’s noble park; these again over-topped by the distant, finely-outlined range of mountains beyond Rydal and Grasmere.
At Water-yeat, you take a road leading across the valley and over the river Crake, to a large old farm-house called Arklid, when you again turn your nose towards Conistone, passing through the venerable village of Nibthwaite, and by the richly-wooded grounds of Waterpark, the road sometimes approaching the lake side, and sometimes diverging from it.
WILSON AND WORDSWORTH.
The lower part of Conistone Water is said to be tame, and many of its most faithful admirers do not attempt to contradict what has almost assumed the aspect of an admitted fact. But you now see that it is anything but tame, and if you cannot accept the evidence of your own optics, or if you doubt the infallibility of your own taste, you will, perhaps, feel more confidence in your perception of the beautiful, when I tell you what Professor Wilson says anent the foot of this lake. You will please to observe, too, that, as I have already said, the Professor’s taste is somewhat warped by his devotion to his own magnificent Windermere, and that he has, on other occasions, written somewhat slightingly of Conistone Water. Hear what he says now:—“Pull away to the foot of the lake, if you choose, and you will be well repaid for your labour by the pretty promontories and bashful bays they conceal, and merry meadows lying in ambush, and “corn riggs sae bonny” trespassing upon the coppice woods that, year after year, yield up their lingering roots to the ploughshare, and grey, white, blue, green, and brown cottages of every shape and size, and pastoral eminences of old lea crowned with a few pine trees, or with an oak, itself a grove.” There, after that, I hope you will never allow Conistone Water-foot to be twitted with tameness again, without running at least one tilt in its defence.
Mr Wordsworth says that the lakes in general should be approached by this road, and as he says it well, and, like the true worshipper of Nature that he undoubtedly is, I feel constrained to quote him:—“The stranger, from the moment he sets his foot upon these (Lancaster) sands, seems to leave the turmoil and traffic of the world behind him; and, crossing the majestic plain when the sea has retired, he beholds, rising apparently from its base, the cluster of mountains among which he is going to wander; and towards whose recesses, by the vale of Conistone, he is gradually and peacefully led.”
As you pursue your pleasant road along the lake, now rising and descending over a gentle hillock, and again running along the level lake shore, the Conistone fells become grander and grander, as you bring them nearer, the Old Man still towering over his compeers, the Patriarch of his tribe, and seeming what the Professor happily says “he certainly is, with his firm foot and sunny brow,
‘The king o’ guid fellows and wale o’ auld men.'”
“WORDSWORTH’S SEAT.”