loo .^tnbleeiitie. 



a blemish than an ornament, unhappily from its size and 

 clumsiness, and the bad taste of its architecture. Though 

 placed in a valley, it has a spire, — the appropriate form of 

 churches in a level country; and the spire is a different 

 colour from the rest of the building ; the east window is also 

 remarkably ugly. There have been various reductions of 

 the beauty of the valley within twenty years or so ; but this 

 is the worst, because the most conspicuous. The old church 

 is suitable to the position, and venerable by its ancient aspect. 

 The site of the churchyard, and the health of the people 

 who lived near it, was such as to make the opening of a new 

 burial-ground a pressing matter -, and hence, no doubt, arose 

 the new church, though a larger and more beautiful cemetery 

 might easily have been found in the neighbourhood. 



In the space dignified with the name of market-place, a 

 handsome mechanics' institute has been erected by the 

 munificence of a gentleman in the neighbourhood. The 

 shops in the town are in or about the market-place, and the 

 Salutation, Queen's, and White Lion, the three principal 

 Hotels, are all conspicuous in it. The traveller can hardly 

 be wrong in his choice of one of these, as they all three 

 comfortable and well-served. At present there are no baths 

 in the place ; — a singular deficiency where there is so much 

 company on the one hand, and of water on the other. The 

 inconvenience is, however, a subject of serious complaint : 

 and it is to be hoped that this needful refreshment for the 

 dusty and tired traveller will be provided, — to say nothing 

 of the residents, who much desire it for purposes of health 

 as well as enjoyment. 



Ambleside and Grasmere still keep up the old custom of 

 Rushbearing. It is a memorial of the time when churches 

 were regularly strewn with rushes. At each of these places, 

 — in Ambleside, on the Saturday preceeding the last Sunday 



