among the woods and rocks. But you are not people of that character; so right-about-face, and back with the wind in your bosom-how delicious !—along the same five multitudinous miles, "alike, but oh! how different!" enjoying the long gloaming-till again the Lake of Coniston lies before you in undazzling lustre, and, looking upwards in your happiness, you behold rising without a halo the bright Queen of Night! 'Early to bed, and early to rise, 66 Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise." And you are up next morning at four. A cup of coffee, made in a moment of a tea-spoonful of Essence, and a biscuit, and you are broad awake, and fit to face the mountains. You set out to walk up towards heaven, as if to meet the sun. sea. The OLD MAN expects you to breakfast-SEATHWAITE Chapel to dinner and supper will be ready for you in the parlour, where you have slept on a sofa-bed. For a mile you pace the lovely level of the lake, and then, leaving the church and bridge of Coniston, you commence the ascent to LEVERS WATER. The road is steep and irregular; and ere long, on turning round, you will discern, beyond the lake, stretching westward ftom the mouth of the river Leven, a long stripe of The copper-mines are passed, and in an hour or so— after having mastered easily about two miles of ascent-you reach the north side of Levers Water, a tarn that is justly proud of its rocks. From it there is a road to Low Water, a little lake just under the Old Man; and the devil's own road it is only more difficult to find. But to-day you have a guide with you; and in about half-an-hour you bathe your forehead in the liquid gloom. We know not how it is with you, but in ascending long rough steeps we are very sulky; silence is then with us the order of the day, and we set down him who breaks it by interrogatory-ejaculations are venial-a blockhead for life. Two great slate-quarries, east and west of the Old Man, are seen near its summit, and from Low Water the guide will conduct you to the eastern one, and thence to the top of the Man. We know not if either be worked now; the western quarry has been silent for fifty years-and its brother may have given up the ghost. Green, in a few words, gives the character of such a place: "It was then in high working condition-it was one grand scene of tinkling animation, noisy concussion, and thundering explosion. But now all is at rest; the aspiring cliff has tumbled to the area, and invaded it with rubbish so ponderous as to make all future attempts at profit useless." You have surveyed, not without awe, these magnificent excavations so high in heaven, solemn but not gloomy, like temples of the sun, or sacred to the winds; and now, having reached the summit, you make your obeisance to the Old Man, and glance your eyes hurriedly over his kingdom. We have never been able to sympathise with the luxury of that almost swooning sickness that assails the stranger in Switzerland, some ten or twelve thousand feet up the side of Mont Blanc, as the greedy guides drag the sumph along sinking knee-deep in the snow-nor with that difficulty of breathing which alarms the above sumph with dread of his lungs being at the last gasp of that rarified air-nor with the pleasure of bleeding at nose, ears, and eyes, from causes which the poor philosopher is afterwards proud to explain—nor with that lassitude of soul and body, which terminates on the top of the achievement in pitiable prostration of all his faculties, or in a drivelling delirium, in which the victor laughs and weeps like a born idiot, his cracked lips covered with sanguinary slaver, from which no words escape but "Poor Tom's a-cold!" Pretty pastime for a Cockney in the region of Eternal Snow! Commend us, who are less ambitious, to a green grassy English mountain, or a purple heathery Scotch one, of such moderate dimensions as thine-O Coniston Old Man! There is some snow, like soap on thy beard; but thy chin is a Christian chin-and that cove is a pretty little dimple, which gives sweetness to thy smile. Strong are we on this summit as a stag-ay, we are indeed a hearty old Buck-and there goes our Crutch like a rocket into the sky. Hurra! hurra! hurra! Maga and the Old Man for ever!-hurra! hurra! hurra! The very first thing some people do, on reaching the top of a high mountain, is to unfold a miserable map-and all maps are miserable except Mudge's, which, we believe, will be happy-and endeavour to identify each spot on the variegated scrawl, by reference to the original. For a while they are sorely puzzled to accommodate the cracked canvass to the mighty world, nor know they whether, in consulting the lying linen oracle, they should insult the sun, by turning their back upon him, or by affronting him in his pride of place. There is sad confusion for a long time about the airts, and the perplexed "Monarch of all he surveys" grossly errs in his guesses -partitioning England anew into provinces, according to a scheme that sets all ancient distinctions at defiance. Mean while, the poor man, by poring over the provinces, produces a determination of blood to the head; and alarms his friends by an appearance of apoplexy, which, however, is not permanent, but gives way to a change of posture, as soon as the topographer has been lifted to his feet. The truth is, that to make anything of a map, on the top of a mountain, a man must have been Senior Wrangler. 'Tis as difficult as to set a Dial in a garden-an exploit which, judging by the audacious falsehoods of all such time-tellers, would appear to be impossible. The loss of time, too, in attempting to put your finger appropriately on the Isle of Man, can be ill afforded on the top of a high mountain, by a person whose usual residence is far below. Life is proverbially short; and to verify Mogg by the circumference, would be the work, not of a day but a year. Pocket the northern counties then, and forget the wonders of Art in those of Nature. "My soul leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky." Leaps up! Seeing the beautiful apparition from below, the soul, in the power of its love and joy, is suddenly with it in heaven. But our soul needs not to leap up now-for we are standing in close connection with the cerulean—the celestial concave; and earth lies far below our feet. Therefore, our soul leaps down-not like a chamois-but like a bird-and that bird an eagle,—who, unhungering for aught else but flight, weighs anchor from the cliff, and away-away-away -wide over his wing-commanded world. How we glory while we gaze. Not in ourselves-but in all creation. There is expansion and elevation of spirit, yet no pride. Self is the centre of our joy, but it radiates to the circumference, shooting out on all sides bright lines of love over the boundless beauty of earth, till imagination loses itself in what seems the obscure sublimity of the far-off uncertain Yes! it is the sea! sunshine brightens the blue deep into belief; and-God be with her on her voyage !-yonder sails a single ship-for one moment-gone already-as white as sea. snow! But as a blank be ocean and all her isles. And let us lavish our loves on these lakes, and vales, and glens, and plains, and fields and meadows, woods, groves, gardens, houses of man and of God-for conspicuous yet in every deepdown dwindled village is the white church-tower-and the heart blesses that one little solitary chapel, where you may see specks that must be sheep, lying in the burial-place, for there are no tombstones there, only grassy heaps! Nine o'clock o' morning, all through the year, is a strong hour-and, be the season what it may, the best time for breakfast. It is nine now; we conjecture that we have been gazing half an hour; so four hours have been consumed in ascending the Old Man. You might ascend him from Coniston Waterhead in two, or less, were it a matter of life or death; but we have been graciously permitted to be for a month strollers and idlers on the earth; and a long day of delight is before us, ere thou, O Sun! shalt be again o'er Langdale-Pikes empurpling the west. "To-morrow for severer thought-but now Jonathan-Long Jonathan-best of guides since old Bobby Partridge died-disembowel the haversack. You are a great linguist, Jonathan; you have got-the gift of tongues. A HAM! None of your minnikin March chicken for mountain breakfast with the Old Man of Coniston-these two are earocks-alias how-towdies-and the colour contrasts well with that of a most respectable pair of ducks. A fillet of veal? It is. Perhaps, Jonathan, it may be prudent to postpone that pigeon-pie. Well, well, take your own way-put it down alongside that anonymous article, and distribute bread. IMPRIMIS VENERARE DEOS! Ere we commence operations, what would not we give for a smoking gurgle of ginger-beer, or of Imperial Pop! Jonathan -thou Son of Saul-are these stone bottles? How Hunger exults in the extinguishment of Thirst! There are four of us, we believe, so let us first discuss the cacklers and the quackers-a dimidium to each; and thus shall we be enabled, perhaps, to look without any very painful impatience on the pigeon-pie, which we ventured hesitatingly to express an opinion might be postponed-though from that opinion we retain liberty to diverge, without incurring the charge of apostasy, should we feel reason to do so from the state of Parties. There is no possibility of being gluttonous on the top of a high mountain. Temperance herself tells you to take the full length of your tether to scorn knife and fork, and draw the spawl of the how-towdy through the shiver-de-freeze of your tusks. That tongue might have been larger, we think, Jonathan, without incommoding the mouth of the Stot. The fourth part of a tongue has an insignificant look ;-ay-that's right-we prefer the root to the tip. Why, it tastes like ham! It is ham! You have given us ham, Jonathan-but we pardon the mistake for now that the surprise has subsided, be the ham Westmoreland or Westphalian, a richer never bore bristle since the progenitor of all porkers descended with his curled tail from the Ark. The silence-the stillness-is sublime! Broken but by the music and the motion of our jaws. Yet they too, at intervals, rest; shut-or wide open for a few moments, as our eyes, spiritually withdrawn from that "material breakfast," wander round the visionary horizon, or survey steadily the lovely landscape, to return with keener animation to the evanescent scenery immediately under our nose. Evanescent 1-for tongue and towdies, ham and ducks, have disappeared! The fillet is fast going the way of all flesh; and under a fortunate star indeed must that pigeon-pie have been baked, if it escape this massacre of the Innocents. Tin-lined is the leathern belt round the shoulders of Jonathan -and 'tis filled with water from the spring in that old slatequarry—and here is a "horn full of the cold north." The Cognac tames without killing it-miraculous mixture of Frost and Fire! And here goes the flash of preservation into our vitals to a sentiment that can be understood but on the mountain-top, The Cause of Liberty—all OVER THE WORLD. We are all intoxicated-but not with brandy-for each took but one gulp of unchristened Cognac and a horn of the baptised; we are divinely drunk with ether-not the ether purchased from Apothecaries' Hall, but the ether given gratis by Apollo-the Sun-God-to all who visit his palace in the regions of Morn. Down the stone-strewn greensward we dancingly go, and like red deer bound over rocks. The proper place for a guide |