Morning journal and courier., 1891-05-23

rents, like mighty plumes in white, and its broken summit and 'Striding Edgen showing thousands of blackened almost vertical furrows in the eternal stone of its peaks and ridges.
 But you now have something to do be- sides gaze on Helvellyn. Your coach is descending the mountain at tremendous speed The wheel-horses are at their best pace, in a trot, and the leaders are fairly at canter. The skids smoke at the wheels Many "God bless mel" is ejaculated by old travellers. The ladies stif1e little shrieks in vain, and have recourse to oc- casional alarming "Ouchesl" The guard blows his horn furiously. And in series of bounds, lurches and ricechets, over a good two miles descent, done in less than seven minutes, the foaming horses, the creaky, beclouded coach and gasping pas sengers, come to grateful standstill at the Kings Head Inn, Thirlspot, hard by the shores of Thirlmsre lake.
 The inn is for those who wish to stretch their legs and wash the mountain dust from their throats with mountain dew. You remain in your high seat there, for this valley and it's mountain-sides have hosts of memory-wraiths for the few min utes in which they may appear. Just be- fore you is Dalehead Hall, once full of Southey's mirth and Wordsworth's quiet wisdom. Beside it, Dalshead meadows, in which once stood the famous inn-of-cal for packers and dalesmen, "Willie How" Across Thirlmere is ancient, haunted Armboth Hall. You passed in your mad gallop down the mountain side Fisher Place where Rosetti, at deaths door, read the last proofs of his wild, melodious son. nets To the right is the pony-path lead ing 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 meet ing-ground. Down there in Thirlmere is the stRock of Names," where the name of William Wordsworth, Dorothy, his faith full sister, Mary Hutchinson, afterwards his noble wife, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Wordsworth 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 Wordsworth stopped his peasant "Waggoner" there, and at the village merry night" gave him two or three hours of rousing fun. Under Bull Crags is the ancient "Justice Stone" where in olden times the law was administered. Almost clinging to the crags in spots like chamois, around the noble valleys rim, are flocks of the black faced Herdwick sheep of Um- bria, which tradition says the Armada brought here three hundred years ago. Not only here, but on many a mountain side in Cumberland you will see circular green bits of pasture 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 countless other objects will lead you into the mazes of antiquity, while in the very names of the inn 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 gaurd, breaks in upon all your dreamful musings. In a trice your now cheery companions are in flood the valley. On, on you speed, scar ing the sandpipers into the rushes and reeds; and the ring -ousels skim scamper- ingly to the farther shadowy shore;- through the valley, past sleeping Thirl- mere; 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 wierd old Dunmail Raise. Here part ing look is had at grim Helvellyn, and the eye fingers lovingly on the pale blue of St. Johns Vale below the deeper blue of far Blencathra; the whole a miniature image of the pass of Lauterbrunnen. Here, too, is that northern curio of the antiquarians, the Raise itself. It is a huge cairn of peb bles. Traditions say the cairn was made over LOGO years ago, on the defeat and slaughter of Dunmail, King of Cumbria, in the year 945. Dunmairs dominions were given to 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 Cumberland and Westmoreland. Into the latter and anoth- noble mountain-fsnked 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.
 Comprehensively speaking, it is all the Vale of Rothay. To the east the eye scans the sides and heights of Fairfield, Red Screes, and Wansfell, with the far ridges of High Street and Kirkstone behind. Tc the west, rise in weird and precipitous masses the savage bikes of Langdale, and Crinkle Crags and Wetherlam with their sunshiny cones are seen in the far south. Beneath you is the fair and peaceful val lev with gray old Grasmere, by its square church tower, asleep beside the peaceful waters of its beautious lake; -sublimity, beauty, peace, everywhere blended as if by a magic wand.> See to the right that an eient millwheel. Above it rises mighty Helm Graz, its crowning majestic piles oi stone ever fairy woman, cowled priest threatening demon, or myriad changing other forms from poets days. to Druid times of old. Stone Arthur,
 ''The last that parleys with the setting sun, frowns opposite. You rush by Swan Inn | whence Wordsworth, Southy and Scot | left on their ponies for Helvellyn's ascent and where there are still delicious legend: | of how Scott came back of evenings, aftel | Wordsworth was safely snoring at Gras | mere to mix the lake water with few drops of John Barleycorn. As you crasf across Rothay's bridge. your eye follow the spume and foam of Sour Milk Ghyll and your thought leaps to the farthes depth of Easdale, which Wordsworth haunted and vowed was all his own. And here, just by the northern edge of Gras mere village, is Allen Bank. Volumes
 could be written upon it's memories; flo
 it is Allen Bank where Wordsworth wrot
 most of the Excursion" where DeQuinc. and "Christopher North" first met, an'
 where Coleridge wrote the "Friend-"
 But here is Grasmere; Grasmere of an
 cient 'Rushbearing" fame; Grasmere witl
 perhaps the oldest and certainly the quint
 est church in England ;Grasmere where tn
 brave old dame soundly walloped tn
 Prince of Wales for marrying" her sheep
 Grasnere where DeQuincey for 37 years re
 tained his Dove Cottage and its maze O
 books that all the other writers borrowet
 and never brought back, so absorbed ant
 absorbing were they, and where the angel
 Margaret, fought the demon opium ant
 rescued that wondrous intellect and sou
 from inconceivable hells of torment; Gras
 where in old St. Oswald churchyard sleel
 Hartley Coleridge and William Words
 worth, and the beauteous Rothay, leapin
 from sequestering meadows, gives bac
 along the old church wall the deathles
 songs they sung
 The heart swells and the eyes fill quick
 here: and you are glad the fresh relay o
 horses speeds you so swiftly away. Tn
 road lays along the the shores of Grasmere
 To the west are mountains, mountain
 everywhere. Half way around the base 0
 bald White Moss, high above your head,
 the "Wishing Gate," famous in romano
 and song. Turning sharply to the lief
 little Rydal water, a speck of blue in
 now almost level valley, is before you. |
 that cottage to the left lives grand | ..-A