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During the height of the " season," 

 which is indicated by the arrival of the 

 " college youths" from Cambridge, who 

 immediately occasion a rise in the price of 

 cigars, and in boat hire, almost every house- 

 keeper lets off a portion of his dwelling as 

 lodgings, and the double-bedded rooms of 

 the inns are now densely tenanted. This is 

 the hay-time of the pencil-makers, for 

 every person visiting Keswick is expected to 

 buy as many black-lead pencils as will serve 

 him all his life, with a handsome reversion 

 to his heirs, spar-dealers, curiosity-mongers, 

 boatmen, and guides ; and sometimes a scout 

 is taken into the pay of a family party to 

 give timely notice of the out-goings of Mr. 

 Southey, when he quits his library to read 

 the book of Nature under the canopy of hea- 

 ven, in order that they may obtain a sight 

 of the laureate wandering in meditative 

 mood, or pouring out, in accents loud, a 

 flood of sounding hexameters to exercise his 

 lungs. The writer was sitting in a friend's 

 garden one evening, 



