If this be true, then what influence must be morally exerted over those who dwell in such a bower of Paradise as Ambleside!
The vale of Windermere is watered by two little rivers, the Rothay and Brathay. They unite a few yards above the head of the lake, and enter it together. In the spawning season a singular sight may be witnessed at this spot: the trout and char, for which Windermere is famous, separate where the rivers meet; the char go up Brathay to spawn, the trout all go up Rothay.
The most charming way to see the vale of Ambleside is to saunter about it; to walk to Stock Ghyll Force and look at the old mill made famous by the painting of Birket Foster; to lean over Rothay Bridge and Pelter Bridge and dream away the hours on the shores of the wildly-sylvan Rydalmere; or to go into Rydal Park and lose ourselves among the cooing of cushats and the shrill cries of blackbirds. Stock Ghyll Force is worth seeing. The word “force” is one of the few words of the past still lingering in secluded places: it signifies to “rush thoroughly:” the waters fall from a height of seventy feet, and make a terrific noise as they rush in two channels down the rocky gorge.
The slopes are covered with the rarest ferns, probably most of them indigenous to the soil, for we were told that few of them lived if transplanted from it. The path leading to the falls now belongs to the town of Ambleside, but a year or two ago it was in the possession of a gentleman who purchased the property at an auction. It had always been free and open to the public, but this speculative individual bought up the waterfall and hemmed it in with a fence. He then made a charge for admission. The townspeople were indignant; a sum of a thousand pounds was raised, and the man bought out at double the amount. The toll for the present is charged, but it will be abolished as soon as the other thousand has been collected,—a consummation fully expected during the present year.
The spirits of the great and good walk the lovely lanes and climb the hills with us, for all around Ambleside is haunted ground. Just outside is the ivy-covered house so long the home of Harriet Martineau, one of the bravest and hardest-working women that ever lived.
“Day by day our memory fades
From out the circle of the hills,”
but the memory of the invalid deaf lady, so loving, so simple, so neighborly, so old in years, so young in heart, is one that will not soon be forgotten, even in the land of Wordsworth and Southey and Arnold.
A little farther, Fox How nestles at the foot of a craggy height. This was for many years the home of Dr. Arnold; and not far away is Fox Ghyll, a beautiful villa belonging to the Right Honorable W. E. Forster, who, it will be remembered, married a daughter of Dr. Arnold’s. Mr. Forster spends a great deal of his time here, glad to escape the “madding crowd” and the bickering and fever of political life.
A lovely drive through “a spot made for nature by herself” brought us to Rydal Mount, so long the home of Wordsworth. He went there in 1813, and at that time the lakes were hardly known. The poet Gray was the only eminent Englishman who visited them before the present century, and he complained that “the great forests and the total want of communication was a barrier he could not surmount.” Upon Goldsmith they made no impression; and Tickell, born within a mile of Derwentwater, has not a line in their praise, though he wrote a long poem on Kensington Gardens. But in 1813 Englishmen were compelled to travel in their own country, for Napoleon had closed the continent of Europe to them, or, as a Westmoreland woman expressed it, “there was sic a deal of uneasiness i’ France.”
And here I may notice, in passing, the peculiar habit of understating everything, so characteristic of Westmoreland people. Where a Yorkshire man would say unequivocally, “The fellow is a scoundrel,” the Westmoreland man would remark. “There were a deal o’ folks more particler about doin’ reet nor him.” A bad man is a bad man all the world over, except in Westmoreland: there he is “a varra moderate chap.” All over the world, when it rains as hard as it can, people do not scruple to say, “It rains hard;” but a Westmoreland man only admits, “It’s softish.”...