44 
sciences. To these circumstances of gratification, it was a fortunate 
accession that at this time, a good scholar, and an amateur of the 
romantic, and a follower of the muses, by reason of prudence as 
well as by choice of affection visited the doctor. He was soliciting 
subscriptions for a Day Book of Antiquities. 
“He gained his object, and more than his object ; for our doctor 
finding the reverend Jesuit capable of making a popular book, and 
not indisposed to incur the labour for the sake of the reward, laid 
the plan of the Tour to the Lakes, and eagerly set Mr. West 
forward in the execution. The publication of this little book has 
answered the purposes of all concerned. It has had a great sale; 
it has sent shoals of visitors to the neighbourhood of Keswick ; 
and, though the author (so it has pleased Providence) was only 
allowed a glimpse in prospect of the success of his labours, and, 
perhaps for the first time in his life, to cherish for a moment the 
hopes of affluence, the projector of the plan has seen his passion 
for the improvement and notoriety of Keswick gratified; and the 
village is now become a post-town, a considerable market for a 
populous and opulent neighbourhood, and an annual fashionable 
resort for the learned and the ignorant, the rich and the curious, 
the young and the old, for him who wants exercise, and for he 
who is worn out for want of relaxation. ‘To occasional intenseness 
of thinking, and profound abstraction from external objects, he 
had always been subject; but as years multiplied, as bodily exercise 
became irksome, and as, by retiring from public business, he drew 
back from the occasion of fresh ideas, his intellectual powers 
seemed to turn the more in upon themselves, and the more eagerly 
to destroy their own energies. Mrs. Brownrigg was of a delicate 
frame, and too iritable habits to see without the symptoms of 
mortal anxiety the melancholy degradation of her husband’s 
understanding. Her earthly existence seemed involved in his 
mental superiority. As that declined and mouldered away, so did 
she. And how true were their mutual sympathies may be judged 
hence, that the last symptoms of worldly feeling which he showed 
were a flood of tears when the corpse of his excellent wife was 
