Rydal Mount.--Rydal Water.-Grasmere.-The Lake School of Poetry.-Helm Crag and its "Ancient Woman."-The naming of Places.-Poetical Associations of the Vale of Grasmere.The Wishing Gate.-The Ceremony of Rush Bearing.-StockGill Force.-The Beauties of a Mountain Torrent.

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RYDAL MOUNT is not much more than a mile perhaps a mile and-a-half from Ambleside. Passing the bridge over the Rothay, a small clear stream, and with the Brathay, the principal feeder of Windermere from this end; the road winds under high trees, and by the side of some elegant modern villas, built chiefly of slate, to the village of Rydal and Rydal Hall, the seat of Lady Le Fleming. Here a road branches off to the right up the hill side by the Church-and this is the road to Rydal Mountwhich long has been, and ever must be a classic spot -unless the day should come, when English literature shall be forgotten.

I had a letter of introduction to the author of the

Excursion given to me by another poet, to be here

after better known-J. A. Heraud-the author of "The Judgment of the Flood," which I left with my card at Rydal; —and taking but a hasty glance at the modest but beautiful dwelling where the Bard has resided so long, I walked on towards Rydal Water and Grasmere ; feeling certain that on the morrow I should receive a summons to the Mount and be able to enjoy its charms at my leisure.

On the left of the road was Loughrigg Fell-and on the right Nab Scar-mountains of considerable magnitude if judged by comparison with the objects around. Both are green to the very top, offering in this a remarkable contrast to the brown heath and grey stones of the more magnificent mountains which I had so lately visited.

Rydal Water is one of the smallest of the Lakes, but by no means the least beautiful. From the road the views that are obtained of it are pleasing, but not to be compared to the prospect from a summer-house in Mr. Wordsworth's garden, which I afterwards heard of and visited, and to the glimpses which are to be obtained from some of the mountain paths, unknown to the majority of travellers. Mr. Wordsworth states that a foot-road passing behind Rydal Mount and under Nab Scar to Grasmere is very favourable to views of the lake and the vale, looking back towards Ambleside. He also says that the horseroad along the western side of the lake, under Loughrigg Fell, exhibits beauties in this small mere

of which the traveller who keeps the high road is not at all aware. Upon this occasion, not having the advantage of a hint from any person as to the proper route to be pursued, I kept the highway; and certainly had no reason to regret doing so, for a lovelier or more agreeable walk I never took. A little island in the lake covered with trees, seemed the very abode of Mab or Titania ;-the waters were placid as a sleeping child; and the green fringe of woodland upon its shores and the high bank of mountains in which it was enclosed on either side seemed steeped in the luxury and glory of sunshine, and happy in the peacefulness of that lovely summer's day. The whole country seemed worthy of being chosen as the abiding place of poets, and I meditated as I walked upon the strange concatenation of circumstances that had been the means of fixing the name of the Lake poets,' upon the writers who either dwell now or formerly resided in the immediate neighbourhood. These writers, so distinct in their characteristics-so totally opposite in many respects in their poetical genius, were all classed together by unthinking critics; and formed into a school by others, when they had not the remotest intention of forming a school for themselves. First there was Wordsworth, meditative, passionless, equable, and sometimes elegant:—but very often tame; -then Coleridge exquisitely elegant-deeply meditative, and full of passion and power and music; singing

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a song of loftier impulses-but singing too little, and making every one who has hung upon his inspired accents regret that he had not wholly devoted the powers of his mind to that poetry in which he took so great a delight himself, and in which the world would have taken still greater. Then, again, there was Southey, different from both-with a wealth of imagination to which Wordsworth has little claim, with an oriental splendour and fulness, and a command of language and rhythm rarely equalled; but failing in that tenderness and power to touch the heart which so charm us in Coleridge. Lastly, there was Wilson differing from them all; and a greater poet in his prose than in his rhyme-but forming the link by which the names of the other three were attached to the public remembrance, more powerfully than by any other, out of themselves. It is certainly strange enough that these writers should be held even now to have formed a school of poetry. Coleridge, who confesses that he was rightly charged by the critics with a profusion of double epithets and a general turgidness of style, wonders that for at least seventeen years the same critics obstinately placed him among the Lake poets, and charged him like them, or rather like Wordsworth, with faults of the very opposite character, viz. bald and prosaic language and an affected simplicity both of manner and matter :-faults, which, as he says, assuredly did not enter into the character of his