And another, a curiosity in its way:
Corruption, Earth, and worms,
Shall but refine this flesh,
Till my triumphant spirit comes
To put it on A fresh.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Sutton: a pretty Village—The Hambleton Hills—Gormire Lake—Zigzags—A Table-Land—Boy and Bull Pup—Skawton—Ryedale—Rievaulx Abbey—Walter L’Espec—A Charming Ruin—The Terrace—The Pavilion—Helmsley—T’ Boos—Kirkby Moorside—Helmsley Castle—A River swallowed—Howardian Hills—Oswaldkirk—Gilling—Fairfax Hall—Coxwold—Sterne’s Residence—York—The Minster Tower—Yorke, Yorke, for my monie—The Four Bars—The City Walls—The Ouse Legend—Yorkshire Philosophical Society—Ruins and Antiquities—St. Mary’s Lodge.
The morning dawns with promise of a glorious day, and of glad enjoyment for us in our coming walk. Our route will lead us through a rich and fertile region to the Hambleton Hills—the range which within the past two weeks has so often terminated our view with its long blue elevations. We shall see another ruin—Rievaulx Abbey, and another old castle at Helmsley—and if all go well, shall sleep at night within the walls of York.
A few miles on the way and we come to Sutton, a pretty village, where nearly every house has its front garden bright with flowers, with tall proud lilies here and there, and standard roses. And every lintel and door-sill is decorated with yellow ochre, and a border of whitewash enlivens even the humblest window. And the inside of the cottages is as clean as the outside, and some have the front room papered. It is truly an English village, for no other country can show the like.
Now the hills stand up grandly before us, showing here and there a scar above the thick woods that clothe their base. The road rises across the broken ground: we come to a lane on the left, marked by a limekiln, and following it upwards between ferny banks and tangled hedges, haunted by the thrush, we arrive presently at Gormire Lake, a pretty sheet of water, reposing in a hollow at the foot of Whitstoncliffe. It is best seen from the bold green bank at the upper end, for there you face the cliff and the hill which rises behind it, covered with copse and bracken. The lake is considerably above the base of the hill, and appears to have been formed by a landslip; it is tenanted by fish, and has, as I heard subsequently at York, a subterranean outlet somewhere among the fallen fragments at the foot of the cliff.
Returned to the road, we have now to ascend sharp alpine zigzags, for the western face of Hambleton is precipitous; and within a short distance the road makes a rise of eight hundred feet. The increasing ascent and change of direction opens a series of pleasing views, and as you look now this way, now that, along the diversified flanks of the hills, you will wish for more time to wander through such beautiful scenery. All that comparatively level country below was once covered by a sea, to which the hills we now stand on opposed a magnificent shore-line of cliffs; some of their summits more than a thousand feet in height.