a0 ia Pawson: The Lake Country. 
devastating power of those huge Alpine masses: do not exist ir 
our North Country Fells, ' ‘Fhe: vast showfields, the amazing 
‘asia the incredible torrents, the avalanches, the mudstreams, 
no counterpart in our, peaceful-land. It is true that in 
Sosa there are in the height of summer sweet nooks 
supreme, but this i is only a transient aspect. For a few weeks 
in the year only do. they. allow themselves to. be approached, 
and full soon they thrust back the intruders on their solitude, 
threatening them with death if they dare to linger longer. 
_Oppresses us with: her omnipotence. But how sweetly does she. 
smile upon us amidst these mountains of our own, bidding us 
enjoy only and fear nothing. _We may climb every hill, we may 
ford every stream; the country sparkles with running water, 
and the music.of the rills is always in our ears, but no torrent 
threatens us; the slopes rise steeply above meadow and pasture, 
but down their sides they send no stone-streams to destroy in 
a night the labour of generations. Here we have constant 
beauty, mae lees habitable beauty, summer and winter, 
autum nan nds ; 
e oben of the rugged and the rural which is so. 
delightful, The valleys are green and fertile, the mountains are 
razed by the flocks even in the winter, and slates and ores are 
dug almost from their summits. In spring some of the hills are ~ 
golden with gorse, in summer are wide stretches of purple 
ae 
colour to the fells which well becomes the harvest :time. In the 
- winter we have for a while a mimic Alps, but dive sted of all 
_ terrors, and often taking off its mask to show that this is only 
make-belief. he 
This sweet piomny mountain-land i is like none other elsewhere 
that we have ever seen or heard of. The lakes and tarns, 
peaks, passes, and valleys, the ridges and the co/s are innumer- 
_ able, and yet one can cross the whole country from north to 
south or from west to east in a summer day.. The ordinary 
_. forces of Nature which have set in order most mountain ranges 
- cannot have framed such a fairy land. It is too perfect, too 
; finished, and on too small a scale. The erosion and denudation — 
se » toy-mountain ns have not fretted out these valleys which, 
| though cally be are ee so faeces deere nor did 
heather, while in autumn the ripened bracken gives a russet _ 
