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The Romance of the Fells is, if possible, a wilder chapter than the Romance of the Sands. Poor Mary Hird, an old woman who set out to travel over Birker Moor, found it a wild, sad journey to Eskdale. The mists came round her, too-she lost her way, and went creeping on her hands and knees, her clothes saturated with wet. Poor old creature, she had put up in her handkerchief some oranges for her grandchildren; she was compelled to drop them on the road, and when the weather became very dark she put on her spectacles to help her closing eyes, but it was all in vain; the neighbours were soon roused to seek her, but they did not find her till the poor tired old heart had ceased from all its beatings. Indeed the Fells in winter are all terrible places; pedestrians who see them in summer time little know what dress they put on when mists, and snows, and rains fall, march and countermarch, and do battle on their summits. What reader of Wordsworth does not remember the little ballad of Lucy Gray, and her journey with the lantern through the snow to meet her mother. How the storm came on before it was expected -how the lonely child wandered up and down, vainly seeking the lost path-how her poor little feet trembled on through the snow till they reached the wooden bridge close to her father's door, leaving the little foot-marks behind as they passed along; and there all sadly disappearing in the middle of the plank, never more to make music in the household, though always to be a strain of music in the mother's and the father's hearts, since

THE ROMANCE OF THE FELLS.

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"Some maintain that to this day

She is a living child,

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray

Upon the lonesome wild.

O'er rough and smooth she trips along,

And never looks behind,

And sings a solitary song

That whistles in the wind.”

It is not an unusual circumstance even now, to be lost on the Fells, or among the mountains.

To the Romance of the Fells belongs the incident which gave birth to both the poem called Helvellyn, by Scott, so well known

"I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,"

and the finer piece called "Fidelity," by Wordsworth, and the artless, graphic, and beautiful words of Christopher North in his Recreations,* all memorialising the death of a bold, true-hearted lover of Nature, who met with his death amidst the sleets and mists of winter, while crossing the terrible Striding Edge by the Red Tarn, at the foot of Helvellyn.

But we have ourselves our own tale of adventures and misadventures to relate, were that the purpose of the book we are writing, and if we do, it is only for the purpose of showing what a margin there is left us yet in the Land of Wordsworth, for the indulgence in all descriptions and feelings, which give width to the imagination. It was a bright morning when we left Cockermouth-it could not be more than seven. The

heart loves to linger over scenes shared with dear hearts now in the grave. There was a sweet child of love and nature with us, a heart full of nature's every mood of grandeur and solemnity, and light and shade; and there was another, a sister of sorrow and bereavement. That day we intended to scour the land, to have a whole days walk with Poetry; and we had it, it was a bright September day, we passed the monotonous distance between Cockermouth and "the Yew Tree, Pride of Lorton Vale." We sat in the branches of the grand old monarch of woods and of ages; we wandered through lower and higher Lorton, through the Church Yard, and in and out among the Cottages. We walked on to Crummack water, and saw in her retired and graceful loneliness, that Queen of the Lakes; we found ourselves in a deep and beautiful wood on her banks, and there we spread our plaids, and formed our table cloth on the ground and dined; not a leaf rippled over our head, not a weed trembled; we seemed miles away from a human soul or habitation, now and then we caught a glimpse of the flashing waters of the Lake through the trees; birds, tame creatures, came and hopped upon our sheltered table; a brook tumbled by our side from which we filled our can, and thus we commenced and concluded our mid-day repast. How we lost our way in the arcades of that wood; how we broke out into the road again; how by lowly cottage and farm at long intervals we came at last to Buttermere's most lonely Lake; how we wound our way along through the village till we began in real earnest our day's work;

A DAY'S WANDERINGS.

213

what information kindly given we got from that good dame who lives at the foot of Honister Crag; what long ways we saw winding and opening among those hills; steep, steep, steep, and now and then a platform of rock on which to rest, and then a weary and rugged way, among mountain torrents, and stones; what party we hailed when near the top, lending a momentary charm of life to us, a word or two and then a farewell; till when the hill top was fairly reached we sat down, and had tea together, and listened and felt the sadness and the desolation of the spot, and the infinite into which it opened, creep into our spirits; and pressed each others hands to remind the spirit that the mortal human heart was really there. How we began to descend, and saw such a sunset, that it seemed as if "a door were opened in heaven," and the burning throne, and "the sea of glass mingled with fire" stood all revealed. How then there gleamed upon us the silver thread, the winding waters of the Een; and to our left, bleak, bare and terrible the storm holding shrouds of Black Sail; and to our right, suddenly revealed the still Lake of Ennerdale, on which we indeed had often spent nights and days, though all new to our fellowwanderers; how we wandered on and never met a soul, nor heard a sound beyond nature's most primeval sounds; how the huge shapeless masses of an ancient world lay thrown about us, like fractured monuments; how Pillar rose opposite to us;

"Wearing the shape

And in the midst Its One particular rock
That rises like a column from the vale."

How weariness came over the steps of our fellowtravellers; how night deepened, and deepened; and how, when we expected to find ourselves at rest, we found we had lost our way; how the present writer hurried on, if possible to descry the nearer road; how he disturbed the poor lowly farmer at his miserable evening meal; how the horse was put to the cart, and the lanterns lighted, and the horse hurried on to reach the spot where the tired ones had been left, and to find them gone; and how at last, the misadventures all over, we met at the little Inn of Ennerdale, and laughed over the happy and glorious supper which closed the long wanderings of that happy day. Why is it all recalled now, and the story told on these pages? Perhaps because it is here not an inappropriate book mark for a sad happy memory, a flower on an early grave.

It would be easy enough to recount many an adventure among those hills, those lakes, and fells, but perhaps they had better remain where they are. Many a dear, dear walk by Bowness and Hawkshead, through Kirkstone Pass and Patterdale, through Keswick, Wasdale, over Skiddaw, through Crosthwaite, by Threlkeld Tarn and Penruddock, might reveal that we have reason to love the Land of Wordsworth.

Thus the Land of Wordsworth wants nothing that can lend to the charm of locality; it is our English Temple. If the reader is one to be arrested by more stately images, by the rustle of ancient banners, or the myste

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