Cumberland, /-^^^t^ ki*%*W/i S59 



Keswick Lake [about which incidental mentions have been 

 already made in this Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 279, and Vol. V* 

 p. 130, 131.] About two miles south of Keswick is situated 

 the eminence called Castle-Rigg, on the summit of which 

 there exists a curious druidical arrangement of rude stones, 

 some of them standing upright, others lying down, and some 

 in an oblique position. The seclusion and sublimity of this 

 situation are particularly well suited to the deep and wild mys- 

 teries of the druids ; and the surrounding scenery, when viewed 

 from this spot, is of an extremely grand and solemn character; 

 Castle-Rigg being the central point of three valleys that dart 

 immediately under it from the eye, and whose mountains form 

 part of an amphitheatre, which is completed by those of 

 Derwent Water on the west, and by the precipices of Skiddaw 

 and Saddleback, close on the north. The hue which pervades 

 all these mountains is that of dark heath or rock ; they are 

 thrown into every form and direction that fancy could suggest, 

 and are at that distance which allows all their grandeur to 

 prevail." The following is the extract first alluded to : — 



" By this time we had nearly passed over the fell, and had 

 begun to descend upon Castle-Rigg. The children had 

 halted beside a rocky basin in the mountain stream, to remind 

 me of a sight which we had once enjoyed there, and to enjoy 

 it again in recollection. It was a flock of geese, which, in 

 the bright sunshine of a summer's day, were sporting in that 

 basin, and with such evident joyousness, that it was a pleasure 

 to behold their joy. Sometimes they thrust their long necks 

 under the water straight down, and turned up their broad 

 yellow feet; sometimes rose half up, shaking and clapping 

 their wings; sometimes, with retorted head, pruned themselves 

 as they floated. Their motion did not, in the slightest degree, 

 defile the water ; for there was no soil to disturb ; the stream, 

 flowing from its mountain springs, over a bed of rock, had 

 contracted no impurity in its course, and these birds were so 

 delicately clean, that they could not sully it ; the few feathers 

 which they plucked, or shook off*, were presently carried away 

 by the current. It was the most beautiful scene of animal 

 enjoyment that I ever beheld, or ever shall behold : the wild- 

 ness of the spot, the soft green turf upon the bank, the beauty 

 of that basin (and they only who have seen mountain streams 

 in a country of clear waters, can imagine how beautiful such 

 basins are), the colour of the stream, which acquired a chry- 

 solite tinge from the rock over which it ran, and the dazzling 

 whiteness of the birds, heightened by the sunshine, composed 

 a picture which, like that of Wordsworth's Daffodils, when 

 it has once been seen, the inward eye can re-create, but which 



