74 



open for rest and recreative communion with Nature to those who 

 have to do the work attd thought of the world. The national 

 education, and our continued social stability, so bound up with 

 the higher education, make such retreats more than ever necessary 

 for us. At least the vales of Cumberland and Westmoreland, charged 

 with the spirit of Wordsworth, must be left undisturbed by sound of 

 the railway, as Nature's own English University in the age of great 

 cities." 



From Glasgow came help and enthusiastic encouragement. 

 With such a friend as the Poet of the Border, Professor Veitch, to 

 back us, we need never fear for help in time of EngHsh Lakeland 

 invasion or desecration. All that work and word will do will be 

 done by him. We owe him great thanks. Principal Caird was 

 warmly with us, as also was Mr. Smart, the Secretary of the Ruskin 

 Society in Glasgow. 



Professor Edward Caird wrote : " Parliament might as well 

 sanction the taking of the canvases from their frames in the 

 National Gallery to be used for towels, as give powers to the 

 Braithwaite and Buttermere Railway," a sentence which for pith 

 reminds one of a sentence in Mr. Frederick Harrison's letter, 

 " that he would rather see a railway through Hyde Park than 

 through Borrowdale." Professor Nichol was, in his letters, as 

 indignant as a great command of language and a powerful way of 

 putting things enables a man to be. Of the hundreds of letters 

 received from men and women who knew Borrowdale well, there 

 seemed to be in each some individualising difference in the reasons 

 given for their individual protests. 



One gentleman, who offered us ;^iooo if Government would buy 

 up Honister and preserve it unquarried to futurity, wrote : " The 

 English people have the good fortune to inherit a small group of 

 mountains, geologically among the most ancient, artistically among 

 the most beautiful, on the face of the earth. Hitherto the Railway 

 Companies, while they have been granted greater facilities for 

 bringing people who have to spend the greater part of their lives 

 in less favoured spots, to within easy reach ofonr fairest playground, 

 have been prevented from marring its beauty, and, what is of more 



