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After leaving school he was apprenticed, as the custom then was, 

 to a surgeon in Whitehaven, and having served the requisite time, 

 he at first commenced practice as a surgeon and apothecary in 

 that town ; but not meeting with the success he expected, he went 

 to Lamplugh to reside, and practised for some time in a district 

 that included Lamplugh, Ullock, Braithwaite, and Dean. He 

 came and commenced practice at Coniston in the year 1844, 

 having been appointed medical officer to the Coniston Copper 

 Mining Company. Sometime after he came to Coniston he 

 married a lady from that district of Cumberland from which he 

 had come ; and they went to live at Yewdale Bridge, near the 

 head of the Lake. His practice took in the parish of Church 

 Coniston, The Langdales, Torver, Seathwaite, and a portion of 

 Hawkshead, comprising some of the loveliest and most sequestered 

 districts of Lakeland. This district seems to have exerted the 

 greatest influence on his mind and character ; and the sketches he 

 wrote after he left the neighbourhood, strongly evidence that he 

 still retained his old enthusiasm for this lovely land. His first 

 production was entitled " Ravings and Ramblings about the Old 

 Man of Coniston," It was a series of sketches chiefly of those 

 districts to which his professional visits were made. These 

 sketches appeared originally in the Kendal Mercury^ but were 

 afterwards collected and published by him in a separate volume. 

 It is a clever but at times somewhat eccentric production, formed 

 — as he tells us in the preface to the earliest edition (now exceed- 

 ingly scarce) — upon a suggestion contained in one of the essays of 

 Professor Wilson. He everywhere professes the greatest admiration 

 for De Quincey as a writer, and he seems to me in this book in 

 some measure to have imitated De Quincey's style. These sketches 

 are fraught with the closest and keenest observations of the scenery, 

 the characters and customs of the people, the local celebrities, and 

 the distinguished literati who had made this region their home. 

 He devotes a considerable portion of his book to a description of 

 the romantic valley of the Duddon, and he at times hits out with 

 considerable force at Wordsworth and the Wonderful Walker. 

 Wordsworth and Gibson looked at things under two very different 



