38 TiZSTalft at "'^^"mtiermere, 



acquaintance with it simplifies other Excursions which we 

 have to suggest.^ He will be struck with the healthy growth 

 of the ferns by the way-side. There are peeps of the lake 

 and islands through the trees, and on some occasions wide 

 openings which give grand pictures, but wanting the bold- 

 ness of those from the opposite shore. 



In this walk, the ^tatuin ^feiouse* above the Ferry Hotel, 

 which must have been seen from the opposite shore of the 

 lake, peeping out of the evergreen woods, will be visited. 

 There the visitor obtains fine views, up and down the lake ; 

 and may mark on the way up, the largest laurels he has ever 

 seen. Should it be towards evening, some resident will pro- 



* * Let us visit the fort -looking building among the cliffs, called The 

 Station, and see how Windermere looks, as we front the east. Why, you 

 would not know it to be the same lake. The isle called Beautiful, which 

 hithertofore had scarcely seemed an isle, appearing to belong to one or 

 other shore of the mainland, from this point of view is an isle indeed, 

 loading the lake with a weight of beauty, and giving it an ineffable 

 character of richness which nowhere else does it possess : while the other 

 lesser isles, dropt "in nature's careless haste" between it and the 

 Fumess Fells, connect it still with those lovely shores from which it 

 floats a short way apart, without being disunited — one spirit blending 

 the whole together within the compass of a fledgling's flight. Beyond 



*' Sister isles, that smile 

 Together like a happy family 

 Of beauty and of love," 



the eye meets the Rayrigg woods, with but a gleam of water between, 

 only visible in sunshine, and is gently conducted by them up the hills of 

 Applethwaite, diversified with cultivated enclosures, "all green as eme- 

 rald," to the very summits, with all their pastoral and arable grounds 

 besprinkled with stately single trees, copses, or groves. On the nearer 

 side of these hills is seen, stretching far off to other lofty regions — the 

 long vale of Troutbeck, with its picturesque cottages, " in numbers with- 

 out number numberless," and all its sable pines and sycamores — on the 

 further side, the most sylvan of all sylvan mount ans, where lately Hemans 

 warbled her native wood -notes wild in her poetic bower, fitly called 

 Dove-nest, and beyond, Kirkstone Fells and Rydal Head, magnificent 

 giants looking westward to the Langdale Pikes (here unseen), 



" The last that parley with the setting sun." ' 

 — Professor Wilson^ 



