Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1889-01-18
THE wINDERMERE COACH ROAD.
Leaf Torn from ga Coach Drive at
the English Lakes,
From Cornhin Magazine.

From Cornhin Magazine
There was at the beginning Of the century,
too, chance of q ''crack" with some of the
literary heroes and local characters of the day.
Southey would certainly come down in his
clogs and with his .'nebbed" cap to fetch or
dispatch parcel of rare books when the coach
pulled up in the Keswick market place. Parson
Bird would probably handle the ribbons over
the Raise and be chaffed numerically because
OF his thus driving the Cuckoo, for so the
coach was called. De Quincy would get up at
the Nab on his way to see Wilson of Elleray
Hartley Coleridge would be offered ride
for his talks sake. young Faber or gentle
Charles Lloyd might have taken places for
London, and it was almost certain that ''Mr
Wordsworth, him o'Rydal." would meet the
coach at Ambleside for proofs or letters. Yes,
u was memorable stage, that stage from
Whltehaven to Kendall and Lancaster in the
olden time-memorable for scenery and society
alike. Then came the iron horse, and, though
poets and coach drivers were one in the oppo-
sitIon, it snorted up the long incline from Ken
dal to Blrthwaite, and the mail from Winder-
mere to Lancaster ceased. But still the merry
footing of the horn is heard for part of the
year over the twenty-one miles that stretch
between Windermere and Keswick. So
well does the beautiful Romance of
Nature" which Wordsworth apostrophised
in his sonnet on hearing of the approach
of the Kendall and Windermere railway,
plead for 1.-The peace" of the district, that an
attempt to substitute the swift wings of the
steam god for the humber pace of a four-in-
hand coach over a portion of the stage before
us was last year frustrated in parliament Still
one nook of English ground. little nook 20
miles across, is secured from the rash invader
that Trevethick planned, and any one who
loves, for old Dake's sake, bit of coaching,
can find choice of sixteen well-appointed
four-in-hands ready to scamper off north
east, or west, to any part of the lake dis
trlct from Windermere on any day of
the week during the tourist season. The
coach drive of the future will take us up
Langdale over the Stake, down Langstrath and
Borrowdale to Keswick and bring US back by
Thirlmere and the Raise to Windermere, but
the Stake pass road will bide deal O. MAX
king" as the Mortimer say. and so we must
just be content with a coach drive there and
back" over the same line from Windermere to
Keswick, and we may be well content. There
Is not anywhere in England drive SO full of
that mingled natural and human interest which
makes scenery so impressive. 1t is well-nigh
impossible for sensitive minds not to feel some
thing of the light that never was on sea or
land as they pass the thresholds of the good
and great, whose thoughts have helped our
England to be pure. In this coach drive to
keswlck they not only go by the homes
of the thinkers and poets and philosophers,
but their foreheads feel the wind and rain
that gave such freshness to the seers of the
last generation; the sunlight on lake or noun
tain head that filed their minds with glory
fills ours to-day. The woods and waterfalls
that speak to us upon our way spoke also to
them. We can in fancy see their familiar forms
upon the road. and. as in eastern travels the
''weli'' or waysde tomb made the journeys
stage rememberable. so we find in this pilgrim
stage through roet land that the great dead
lend il a kind of solemn sweetness and the dust
Of two laureates hallows the wonder giving
FE,f-g ill IL.
coach drive that so stirs the Imagination as this
coach drive from Windermere to Keswick.