LIFE AT ELLERAY. 79 



cence so gorgeous as few estates in this island can boast, and of 

 those few, perhaps, none in such close connection with a dwelling- 

 house. Stepping out from the very windows of the drawing-room, 

 you find yourself on a terrace which gives you the feeling of a 

 ' specular height,' such as you might expect on Ararat, or might 

 appropriately conceive on ' Athos seen from Samothrace.' The 

 whole course of a noble lake, about eleven miles long, lies subject to 

 your view, with many of its islands, and its two opposite shores so 

 different in character — the one stern, precipitous, and gloomy ; the 

 other (and luckily the hither one), by the mere bounty of nature 

 and of accident — by the happy disposition of the ground originally, 

 and by the fortunate equilibrium between the sylvan tracks, mean- 

 dering irregularly through the whole district, and the proportion 

 left to verdant fields and meadows, wearing the character of the 

 richest park scenery; except indeed that this character is here and 

 there a little modified by a quiet hedge-row, or the stealing smoke 

 which betrays the embowered cottage of a laborer. But the 

 sublime, peculiar, and not-to-be-forgotten feature of the scene is 

 the great system of mountains which unite about five miles off, at 

 the head of the lake, to lock in and enclose this noble landscape. 

 The several ranges of mountains which stand at various distances 

 within six or seven miles of the little town of Ambleside, all sepa- 

 rately various in their forms, and all eminently picturesque, when 

 seen from Elleray, appear to blend and group as parts of one con- 

 nected whole ; and, when their usual drapery of clouds happens to 

 take a fortunate arrangement, and the sunlights are properly broken 

 and thrown from the most suitable quarter of the heavens, I cannot 

 recollect any spectacle in England or Wales, of thejnany hundreds 

 I have seen, bearing a local, if not a national reputation for magnifi- 

 cence of prospect, which so much dilates the heart with a sense of 

 power and aerial sublimity as this terrace-view from Elleray." 



At the time when my father purchased Elleray, there was no 

 suitable dwelling-house on the estate. A rustic cottage indeed 

 there was, which, with the addition of a drawing-room thrown out 

 at one end, was made capable for many a year to come of meeting 

 the hospitable system of fife adopted by its owner. It was built 

 of common stone, but it might have been marble for aught that the 

 eye could tell. Pretty French windows opened to the ground, and 

 were the only uncovered portion of it ; all else was a profusion of 



