680 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 



should be as near to Nature as possible, and pays no regard to the circumstance that 

 in the immediate vicinity of the mansion it is permissible to prefer formal lines on 

 account of their harmony with those of architecture. Thus, although Wordsworth 

 may have been in advance of his time as an advocate of the free play of the senses, he 

 did not go so far as we now know to be desirable. 



Mr. de Selincourt has included as a second appendix letters to the Horning Post 

 written by Wordsworth in 1844 on the subject of the proposed Kendal and Windermere 

 Railway. Descending to the dusty arena of practical affairs, his academic mind loses 

 something of its lofty detachment. It is interesting to compare these letters with a 

 recent work entitled ' England and the Octopus,' dealing with the things that to-day 

 impair the peacefulness of our scenery. The style of Wordsworth is indeed less 

 trenchant than that of Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis, but underlying exasperation is 

 almost equally evident. On the whole, however, it is when Wordsworth is dealing 

 with general principles that he is of most service to the cause which so many of us 

 have at heart, the preservation of scenic beauty, and we may well take the concluding 

 paragraph of his ' Description ' as the text of our present appeal for preservation of 

 scenic amenity in the countryside generally and the district of the English Lakes in 

 particular : 



' It is then much to be wished that a better taste should prevail among these new 

 proprietors ; and, as they cannot be expected to leave things to themselves, that skill 

 and knowledge should prevent unnecessary deviations from that path of simplicity 

 and beauty along which, without design and unconsciously, their humble predecessors 

 have moved. In this wish the author will be joined by persons of pure taste through- 

 out the whole island, who, by their visits (often repeated) to the Lakes in the North 

 of England, testify that they deem the district a sort of national property, in which 

 every man has a right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy. ' 



Regional Planning for the English Lake District. 

 By Mr. Ewart James. 



It was mainly as a result of the development of road traffic that the Lake District 

 was threatened ^vith the same dangers of uncontrolled development as other districts, 

 in the form of unsuitable houses, badly placed, built of unsuitable materials, ' ribbon ' 

 roads, and new motor roads over hills. Once the disease took hold it was fatal. 

 There was no cure for a view screened by a row of houses. It was also stealthy and 

 insidious. There was no shouting in the Maiket Place, but the next time they went 

 along a certain road they saw two or three more new little dots of bungalows. This 

 was followed by the filling in of the gaps. The result was that a one-time lovely 

 panorama was destroyed for a century. 



Invaluable work had been done in the Lake District for many years by three 

 organisations. The first was the Lake District Association. This was founded in 

 1877, its object being the popularising of the Lake District as a place of residence and 

 as the resort of visitors, by assisting to maintain, in good order, existmg roads and 

 footpaths, and rendering points of interest more accessible without impairing their 

 natural beauty. That rule expressed quite frankly and properly the point of view of 

 those thousands of residents whose living depended upon maintaining the popularity 

 of the Lake District as a holiday resort. It laid stress upon ' accessibility ' and 

 publicity while recognising the need for ' preservation.' The Lake District Association 

 had rendered immense public service by the cairning of routes, the defence of public 

 rights of way, the provision of seats and bridges, and in many other ways. Taking 

 them in date order, the next organisation was the National Trust. As its name and 

 its very well k»own work indicated, this was a national rather than a local organisation, 

 but it had, to all intents and purposes, a Lake District origin, being founded under 

 the inspiration of Canon Rawnsley in 189.3. The Trust now held some twenty separate 

 properties in the Lake District. The third organisation, founded in 1919, was the 

 Society for Safeguarding the Natural Beauty of the Lake District. That, again, owed 

 its existence to that greatest of Lake District champions. Canon Rawnsley. It was 

 essentially and strictly a preservation society, seeking to do its work by persuasion 

 and example rather than by compulsion. It, again, had done invaluable work, 

 notably by securing the removal of disfiguring advertisement boards over Dunmail 

 Raise. There would always be useful work for a society of this kind to undertake. 



This matter had been taken up by the Cumberland County Council and its 

 Parliamentary Committee. Their action in promoting a conference, with a view to 



