i2 4 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



One other mountainous district in Britain — that of 

 the English Lakes — claims our attention for its influence 

 on the progress of the national literature. Of all the 

 isolated tracts of higher ground in these islands, that 

 of the Lake District is the most eminently highland in 

 character. It is divisible into two entirely distinct por- 

 tions by a line drawn in a north-easterly direction from 

 Duddon Sands to Shap Fells. South of that line the 

 hills are comparatively low and featureless, though they 

 enclose the largest of the lakes. They are there built 

 up of ancient sedimentary strata, like those that form 

 so much of the similar scenery in the uplands of Wales 

 and the South of Scotland. But to the north of the 

 line, most of the rocks are of a different nature, and 

 have given rise to a totally distinct character of land- 

 scape. They consist of various volcanic materials which 

 in early Palaeozoic time were piled up around sub- 

 marine vents, and accumulated over the sea-floor to a 

 thickness of many thousand feet. They were subse- 

 quently buried under the sediments that lie to the 

 south, but, in after ages uplifted into land, their now 

 diversified topography has been carved out of them 

 by the meteoric agents of denudation. Thus pike 

 and fell, crag and scar, mere and dale, owe their 

 several forms to the varied degrees of resistance to 

 the general waste offered by the ancient lavas and 

 ashes. The upheaval of the district seems to have 

 produced a dome-shaped elevation, culminating in a 

 summit that lay somewhere between Helvellyn and 

 Grasmere. At least from that centre the several 

 dales diverge, like the ribs from the top of a half- 

 opened umbrella. 



