In this rude vale we met a travelling Jew pedlar, laden with barometers and thermometers. What an extraordinary land is this! In a place as wild and savage as the desert of Batuecas might we have purchased such weather-glasses, as certainly it would be hopeless to seek for in most of the cities in Spain.
The waters which accompanied our descent spread themselves into a little lake in the valley, called Brotherwater; small, but exquisitely beautiful. I have never seen a single spot more beautiful or more rememberable. The mountain behind,—it is one of the highest in the country,—forms a cove, in which a single old mansion stands in a green field among old trees. The most rigid Jeronymites could not wish for a place of more total seclusion. Out of this lake flowed a little river, clear, rapid, and melodious; we crossed it, and our path lay along its banks. How often did I stop and look back, and close my eyes to open them again, as if repetition could better impress the landscape upon remembrance than continuity; the delight I felt was mingled with sorrow by a sense of transitoriness;—it was even painful to behold scenes so beautiful, knowing that I should never behold them more.
We had started early, to have the day before us, so that we reached Paterdale to breakfast; the distance was two leagues and a half, enough to raise an appetite even had it been plain ground,—and the mountain air had made us almost ravenous. If the people of the inn had not been prepared for a succession of numerous visitors, our hunger might have looked for supplies in vain: and if many of their visitors were as hungry as ourselves, they would breed a famine in the land. No banquet, no wines could have exhilarated us more than food. We truly felt the joy of health and the reward of exercise.
The abundance of water in these vales is more delightful than can be imagined. Nothing languishes here for drought. It is the midst of summer, and the brooks are full. If the sound of a tank or a water-wheel is so agreeable, judge what the voice must be of these living streams, now breaking round rocks, which, in the process of ages, they have worn smooth, now leaping and foaming from crag to crag, now coursing over a bed of pebbles. How little do our Valverdes and Valparaisos bear comparison with these vales, which are kept always green by streams which never fail!
Here we took boat upon the lake of Ulswater. The beauties of Winandermere, highly as they had excited our admiration, seemed as nothing when we compared them with this grander country. Higher mountains rose here immediately from the Lake, and instead of villas and gardens there was a forest on the shore. On Winandermere I had wished for gondolas and mirth and music;—here I should have felt that they were incongruous with the scene, and with the feelings which it awakened.—The domestic architecture of the English is however so abominable that it will spoil whatever can be spoilt. There is a detestable house here belonging to a gentleman, who, for his great possessions in the vale, is called the King of Paterdale. Wherever it is seen it is as impertinent and offensive as the old Gracioso[10] in a scene of real passion.
Ulswater forms three reaches,—each three miles in length. The whole can never be seen at one view, nor indeed any two of the reaches except from their point. We landed near a singular building, which serves as a hunting-seat for the duke of Norfolk, and we were admitted to see a waterfall in his garden. Nature produces as endless varieties of scenery with the elements of wood, water, and rock, as she does of countenance with the features of the human face, and it is as hopeless to delineate by words the real character of one as of the other. Ara Force is the name of this waterfall. A chaise passed us as we were returning to the boat; there were three picturesque tourists in it, and one of them was fast asleep in the corner.
The lake and the mountains end together; a broad and rapid river called the Emont flows out of it. We landed, and proceeded a league and quarter through a cultivated country to Penrith, a town which, though we should have thought little of it in any other part of England, seems here, by comparison, like a metropolis. The flies have grievously tormented us upon our walk. I used to complain of our mosquitos, but they have at least the modesty to wait for night and darkness;—these English tormentors attack man to his face in broad day-light. Certainly they are of the same species as those which were chosen to be one of the plagues of Egypt.
[10] The buffoon of the Spanish stage.—Tr.