Morning journal and courier., 1891-05-02

were, at ones feet. To the eastward the eye ranges over the 'fbackbone" of Eng land, the billowy Pennine Hills, and through verdureless dips Northumberland and Yorkshire can be scanned to the Ger man ocean. To the west myriads of feIls and dales in wild confusion. Then the Irish sea, and with a glass the mighty walls of Antrim, with the sunlight upon them a shining thread upon the horizon. To the southwest, across 8 turbulent mass of peaks and fells and a silyery reach of the sea, lone Snsefell, the giant of the Isle of Man, seems to float upon the waves. To the south and southeast, where huge Helvellyn does not shut out the sight, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire seem an interminable maze of billowy scenic splendor. To the north across the Solwap, those sweet old shires, wherein Burns lived, sang and died, spread their sunny dales, even their very fields and homes, to view, sentineled by hoary Criffel, at Solway side, and blend into purples and grays along the range of misty hills behind.
 There is another matchless panorama that with the eye of fancy and the heart of memory can be seen and felt from grim old Skiddaw's heights. The eyes mist with tears as they trace the saffrony Sol way and recall the struggles and endless tragedy of that mighty heart that broke in the bitter fight, and is now at peace be- meath the mausoleum in old Dumfries town; while every true man that lives pays tender tribute to the memory of Robert Bnrns. The melancholy Gray, author of the ''Elegy," on foot and with the pretty toy, the Claude-Lorraine glass in hand, in the autumn of 1769, wandered past Skid daw in his tour of discovery, which first opened the eyes of England to the beau ties of the Cumbrian lakes, and made it possible for all the host that followed to know their inspiration. Here, at your feet in old Keswick town, dwelt, sang and lies buried in Crossthwaite church yard near the murmurings of the river Greta he so loved, that high souled poet of pensive remembrance and meditative calm, Robert Southey. Here, too, the unhappy Cole ridge passed the most fruitful, though still the most miserable, years of his bale ful slavery to a deadly drug. Beside him, in this wrath procession of intellectual genii of the lake region, appears that one who of all English men of letters existed in the dream-life madness of opium, Thomas De Quincy. Down there in one of keswick's cottages, Shelley passed, with his girl-wife Harriet, the only happy hours of his unfortunate life. Sturdy, iconoclastic, yet true and Christian if her etic, Harriet Martineau, stands bright and clear in the picture, among the blossoms of Ambleside. Good Felicia Hemans, with tinge of sadness in her patient face, is near. Sunny-hearted, great-brained Professor Wilson Christopher North with his huge frame and benign face, as if the very spirit of the lovely region shone from his kindly eyes, makes the way sunnier for his strong, sure tread. With him l see another one, firm, calm, tender, noble, one who through his labor st Rug by, swept forever from the British educa- tional system the rule of brutality and dread, noble pr. Arnold. And that one who is first and last, with whom your eyes of fancy calls from the past to confront you wherever your human eyes may rest, is Wordsworth, interpreter of nature to man.
 Descending into old Keswick, this ever recurring influence of identification of everything connected with the lovely re- zion with this now silent though never voiceless host, is strong upon you. They walk with you through these quaint and narrow streets. They liveg, or lodged, or were guests. in the many gabled, trellised and tiny -paned houees you see. Men like Scott, Fitzgerald and Tennyson have eaten at the same tables, and dreamed of the nature-glories here in the same chambers where you find food and rest. Through all this loving train of reflection the pleas ing recognition of the keswick of to-day steals over you. It is not much different than in the times when five hundred pack ponies passed and repassed with their Cumbrian mountain traffic. It is just a bit newer and brighter in places on ac- count of the throngs that come in sum mer. You will find plenty of houses, with legends, in iron set in nntels, in car
 wings on oaken ceiling beams, or wrought in ancient stucco, that tell of their build ing in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seven teenth centuries. Some of the most curi- ous old inn-yards of England are here And as to old, old folk, l never saw so many ill any town ancient or new. 1 sat upon the coping of the Greta bridge with one John Rigg. He is two years older than this century. He had wandered, he said, when a lad of twelve, with Southey and the first Coleridge, over all the fells and through all the daies about keswick; and had seen them all, from Southey to Wordsworth, come and sing and gO-into the church-yards of Crossthwaite and Grasmere, or away to other lands; as any where away from Cumbrian shadow and shine seemed to his dim old thought
 Not more than stones throw from where we sat, on gentle eminence in the northern edge of keswick, stands Greta Hall, Southey's old home. It is now oc- cupied by Mir John Kennedy, gentleman, and owned by a maiden lady of ripe age and wealth named Gibson. Just ninety years ago Coleridge, who had then occu- pied Greta Hall, wrote Southey, inviting him to share his home with him, descTib- ing the place as follows: ''Our house stands on a low hill, the whole front of .phi ic Eall and r1sar1 nine-tenths of which is nursery garden. Behind the house is an orchard and q | small wood on steep slope, at the foot of which is the river Greta, which winds | round and catches the evening light in | front of the house. In front we have a | giant camp-an sncamped army of tent | like mountains which, by an inverted arch, gives q view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped | lake of Bassenthwaite; and on our left | Dsrwentwater and Lodore (the falls after wards made famous by Southey's playful | rhyme for his children) full in view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrowdale.
 Behind is the massive Skiddaw, smooth | green, high, with two chasams and a tent like ridge in the larger" This descrip | ton is now as true of Greta Hall and its | scenic surroundings when it was writ | ten. The beeches surrounding the man | sion are more majestic; the quaint square
 two-storied, bow widowed old place may
 be trife grayer; but the rocks clamol
 and cav about the overarching trees; tn,
 Greta sings over its graceful bend of shal
 lows; and one can almost imagine that uI
 there in that famous second-story hbrar,
 some one must stand by the broad pane
 of the high bow-window and drink in tn,
 glory of the prospect to reveal it again t
 men; just then.
 Turning from the old home of Southey
 the eye follows winding, struggling hal
 village, half country street, and is arrest
 ed by the huge square tower and the lov