Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-05-24

and its mountain sides have hosts of mem
| Ory-wra1ths for the few minutes in which
they may appear Just before you is Dale
head Hall, once full of Southey's mirth and
Wordsworth's quiet wisdom. Beside it,
Dalehead Meadows, in which once stood the
famous inn-of-call for packers and dalesmen,
"Willie How" Across Thirlmere is an
cient, haunted Armboth Hail.
You passed in your mad gallop down the
mountain side Fisher Place, where Rossetti,
at deaths door, read the last proofs of his
wild, melodious sonnets. To the right is
the pony-path leading over to outlandish
Watendlath; and you can any time go, over
| its weird, wild course with Forster and
Matthew Arnold, by reading the latter's
exquisite poem, Resignation All this
valley was Wordsworth's and Coleridge's
| daily meeting ground Down there in
Thirlmere is the Crock of Names"
where the names of William Words
worth, Dorothy, his faithful sister
Mary Hutchinson, afterward his noble
| wife, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Words
| worth and Sarah Hutchinson, were chiseled
| by their own hands. At the valleys edge
| to the north is all that is left of the Cherry
Tree Inn, forever famous because Words
worth stopped his peasant 'Waggoner there,
| and at the ''village merry night. gave him
two or three hours of rousing fun.
The Black-Faced Herdwick Sheep.
Almost clinging to the crags in spots like
chamois around the noble valleys rim are
| focks of the black-faced Herdwick sheep of
Umbria, which, tradition says, the Armada
brought here 300 years ago. Not only here
but on many mountain side in Cumber-
land you will see circular green bits of pas
ture on the hillsides They are walled with
stone, and are the earliest Enclosures by
civilized people in the north of England.
In ancient times the cows were herded
| within them at milking time. Here and
there on highest crags can be seen the
''maens' or cairns of old. These and count
less other objects will lead you into the
mazes of antiquity, while in the very names
of the inns and valley of Thirlspot and of
Thirlmere, set like twin sapphires in the
bosom of the vale, tell of the Viking Thorold
who dwelt here and bequeathed the spot
his name forever.
'Time's up!" from the guard, breaks in
upon all your dreamful musings. In trice
your now CHEEKY companions are in their
places. The notes of the coach-horn food
the valley. On, on you speed, soaring the
sandpipers into the rushes and reeds; and
the ring-ousels skim scamperingly to the
farther shadowy shore-through the valley,
past sleeping Thirlmere; up past little
Wytheburn church, not as big as your own
parlor, and the second smallest house of God
in Britain; and then up, up again, as over
Castle Rigg, to weird old Dunmail Raise.
Here parting look is had at grim Helvel-
lyn, and the eye fingers lovingly on the pale
blue of st. Johns Vale below the deeper
blue of far Blencathra; the whole minia-
ture image of the pass of Lauterbrunnen.
The Mark of Boundary.
Here too, is that northern curio of the
antiquarians, the Raise itself 1t is huge
cairn of pebbles. Tradition says the cairn
was made over 1,000 years ago, on the de-
feat and slaughter Of Dunmail, King of
Cumbria, in the year 945. DunmaiPs do
minions were given to King Malcolm of
Scotland, and the cairn was left to mark the
boundary of the two kingdoms, as it to-day
forms the boundary of the shires of Cumber-
land and Westmoreland Into the latter
and another noble mountain fanked valley
your coach now plunges with smoking horses
and wheels. Faster and faster speeds the
coach, and faster and thicker crowd objects
and scenes hallowed by the lives and graves
of men and the immortal glamor of song
But here is Grasmere; Grasmere of an
cient "Rushbearing" fame; Grasmere with
perhaps the oldest and certainly the quaint
est church in England; Grasmere where the
brave old dame soundIy walloped the Prince
mere where DeQuincey for 81 years re-
tanned his Dove Cottage and its maze of
books that all the other writer's borrowed
and never brought back, so absorbed and
absorbing were they, and where the angel,
Margaret, fought the demon opium and
rescued that wondrous intellect and soul
from inconceivable hells of torment; Gras-
mere, where in old st. Oswalds churchyard
sleep Hartley Coleridge and William
Wordsworth, and the beauteous Rothay,
leaping from sequestering meadows, gives
back along the old church wall the DEATH
less songs they sung.
Where CoIeridge'Lived and Died.
The heart swells and the eyes fill quickly
here, and you are glad the fresh relay of
horses speeds you so swiftly away. Swing
ing into the north-and-south highway at
spanking speed you come alongside tiny
cottage embedded in ivy, its hedge and
walls squarely upon the road, and sweet
bit of meadow sloping away from the place
to the shore of Rydal Water. Nab Scar
rises high behind it, like the fr-hung hill
behind the Alcott cottage at Concord. 1t is
Nab Cottage, and was built nearly 300 years
ago. In it loyal Margaret Simpson, after
ward wife. of DeQuincey, was born, and
under its States and ivies Hartley Coleridge
lived and breathed his last.
IOu can scarcely recall UneSe tn1ngS DeI0re
you are passing Rydal. Just a glimpse of
the little church is seen, so dense is the
foliage here. But you know that up there
at the end of that shadowy way, to the right
is splendid Rydal Hall, to the left Rydal
Mount, where Wordsworth lived for 40
blissful years; and that the melodies of the
Rydal waterfalls are just behind.
And then through an almost unbroken
avenue of beeches and sycamore you are
whirled along one of the grandest roads in
England until, with aching bones, whirling
head, hungry stomach, and heart athrill for
its royal stirring, your coach is brought up
with crash and bang in front of John
Riggs famous Windermere hostelry. The.
grateful odors of broiling char (almost as
ravishing as those of Thompson's Glouces-
ter 'planked shad !'') ascend to your eager
nostrils; and before your eyes lies one of the
sweetest scenes on earth-transcenden
Windermere, queen of all the Umbrian
lakes, dotted with dreamful sails; and from
her silvery shores upleading the gladden.
ing vision to measureless masses of noun
tains swathed in emerald and purple and
crowned with sun-kissed glories, to the
high, far horizon line, that hints of but re-
pels the tempests of the thunderous Irish
Sea. EDGAR L. WAKEMAN.
WHAT CHILE HAS TO SELL.