The first of these is the vale of St. John, a narrow, cultivated spot, lying in the bosom of tremendous rocks, that impend over it in masses of gray crag, and often resemble the ruins of castles. These rocks are overlooked by still more awful mountains, that fall in abrupt lines, and close up the vista, except where they also are commanded by the vast top of Helvellyn. On every side, are images of desolation and stupendous greatness, closing upon a narrow line of pastoral richness; a picture of verdant beauty, seen through a frame of rock work. It is between the cliffs of Threlkeld-fell and the purple ridge of Nadale-fell, that this vale seems to repose in its most silent and perfect peace. No village and scarcely a cottage disturbs its retirement. The flocks, that feed at the feet of the cliffs, and the steps of a shepherd, "in this office of his mountain watch," are all, that haunt the "dark sequestered nook."
The vale of Nadale runs parallel with that of St. John, from which it is separated by the ridge of Nadale-fell, and has the same style of character, except that it is terminated by a well wooded mountain. Beyond this, the perspective is overlooked by the fells, that terminate the vale of St. John.
The third valley, opening from the head of Threlkeld, winds along the feet of Saddleback and Skiddaw to Keswick, the approach to which, with all its world of rocky summits, the lake being still sunk below the sight, is sublime beyond the power of description. Within three miles of Keswick, Skiddaw unfolds itself, close behind Saddleback; their skirts unite, but the former is less huge and of very different form from the last; being more pointed and seldomer broken into precipices, it darts upward with a vast sweep into three spiry summits, two of which only are seen from this road, and shews sides dark with heath and little varied with rock. Such is its aspect from the Penrith road; from other stations its attitude, shape and colouring are very different, though its alpine terminations are always visible.
Threlkeld itself is a small village, about thirteen miles from Penrith, with a very humble inn, at which those, who have passed the bleak sides of Saddleback, and those, who are entering upon them, may rejoice to rest. We had been blown about, for some hours, in an open chaise, and hoped for more refreshment than could be obtained; but had the satisfaction, which was, indeed, general in these regions, of observing the good intentions, amounting almost to kindness, of the cottagers towards their guests. They have nearly always some fare, which less civility than theirs might render acceptable; and the hearth blazes in their clean sanded parlours, within two minutes after you enter them. Some sort of preserved fruit is constantly served after the repast, with cream, an innocent luxury, for which no animal has died.
It is not only from those, who are to gain by strangers, but from almost every person, accidentally accosted by a question, that this favourable opinion will be formed, as to the kind and frank manners of the people. We were continually remarking, between Lancaster and Keswick, that severe as the winter might be in these districts, from the early symptoms of it then apparent, the conduct of the people would render it scarcely unpleasant to take the same journey in the depths of December.
In these countries, the farms are, for the most part, small, and the farmers and their children work in the same fields with their servants. Their families have thus no opportunities of temporary insight into the society, and luxuries of the great, and have none of those miseries, which dejected vanity and multiplied wishes inflict upon the pursuers of the higher ranks. They are also without the baseness, which such pursuers usually have, of becoming abject before persons of one class, that by the authority of an apparent connection with them, they may be insolent to those of another; and are free from the essential humiliation of shewing, by a general and undistinguishing admiration of all persons richer than themselves, that the original distinctions between virtue and vice have been erased from their minds by the habit of comparing the high and the low.
The true consciousness of independence, which labour and an ignorance of the vain appendages, falsely called luxuries, give to the inhabitants of these districts, is probably the cause of the superiority, perceived by strangers in their tempers and manners, over those of persons, apparently better circumstanced. They have no remembrance of slights, to be revenged by insults; no hopes from servility, nor irritation from the desire of unattainable distinctions. Where, on the contrary, the encouragement of artificial wants has produced dependence, and mingled with the fictitious appearance of wealth many of the most real evils of poverty, the benevolence of the temper flies with the simplicity of the mind. There is, perhaps, not a more odious prospect of human society, than where an ostentatious, manœuvring and corrupted peasantry, taking those, who induce them to crimes, for the models of their morality, mimic the vices, to which they were not born, and attempts the coarse covering of cunning and insolence for practices, which it is a science and frequently an object of education to conceal by flagitious elegancies. Such persons form in the country a bad copy of the worst London society; the vices, without the intelligence, and without the assuaging virtues.
[DRUIDICAL MONUMENT.]
After passing the very small, but neatly furnished church of Threlkeld, the condition of which may be one testimony to the worthiness of the neighbourhood, and rising beyond the vales before described, we came to the brow of a hill, called Castle Rigg, on which, to the left of the road, are the remains of one of those circular monuments, which, by general consent, are called Druids' Temples. This is formed of thirty-seven stones, placed in a circle of about twenty-eight yards diameter, the largest being not less than seven feet and a half high, which is double the height of the others. At the eastern part of this circle, and within it, smaller stones are arranged in an oblong of about seven yards long, and, at the greatest breadth, four yards wide. Many of those round the circle appear to have fallen and now remain at unequal distances, of which the greatest is towards the north.