LAKES. 101 



land, and even those of the north of England, have 

 little beauty where there are no lakes ; they are 

 covered with brown heather, unbroken by any admix- 

 ture save dingy stone and red gravelly banks, where 

 the rains have torn them to pieces. There are none 

 of those sweet grassy dells and glades, and none of 

 those delightful thickets, coppices, and clumps of trees, 

 that spot the watered regions. No one seeks for 

 beauty or sublimity in the mountains of Northumber- 

 land and Yorkshire ; or in that dull part of the Gram- 

 pians where the lla, the Esk, and the Dee have 

 their remotest sources. When the low lands are ap- 

 proached, there will of course be sublimity, because 

 the rivers have gained force, and will cleave the earth 

 and form precipices and cascades. But the upper 

 regions, whatever may be their elevation, are cursed 

 with more than Babylonian infliction. " The bittern 

 will not dwell there :" the dusky raven, with his revolt- 

 ing crocq, hollow and horrible, as if it came from the 

 chambers of the grave, is almost the sole inhabitant ; 

 and even he does not make these places his home, but 

 merely visits them for the purpose of devouring the 

 remains of those animals that have perished in their 

 desolation. If the surface be dry, it presents nothing 

 but miserable stunted heather, and white lichen, which 

 crackles under the foot, and is the shroud of all useful 

 vegetation. If it be moist, then it is a peat-bog, which 

 offers no safe place for the foot; or, which is more 

 unsightly still, a dead peat-bank, over the whole black 

 surface of which there is not one living thing, animal 

 or vegetable. The water that creeps away from this 

 miserable surface has the appearance of unpurified 

 K 3 



