THE PLEASURES OF RAMBLES. 
247 
thus, at last, I got to believe, with Kingsley, that what these 
good results were due to might be that “ Wind of God ” that he 
sings the praises of. 
In the northernmost part of my rambles I used to walk 
through what Wordsworth, a true Yorkshire poet, referring to 
such lovely dales as Swaledale, Yoredale, Wharfedale, calls 
“The Yorkshire dales, 
Among the rocks and winding scars, 
Where deep and low the hamlets lie, 
Beneath their little patch of sky, 
And little lot of stars.” 
A little more south I was in the Bronte district, a region of 
high and bleak moorlands that will live for ever in the works of 
the gifted sisters ; and farther south still, near the rise of the 
Don, I was in the district most memorable of all to me — the 
ancestral home of the Wordsworths. Here were their monu- 
ments, and here the name was still quite a common one, exist- 
ing now in the form of Wadsworth, to which it had been 
transformed by the Cumbrian dalesmen, who usually spoke of 
their poet as “ Yan Mr. Wadsworth, t’ maister of t’ stamp- 
office.” 
Near here had taken place an awful flood, caused by the 
bursting of a reservoir among those rainy uplands that are full 
of reservoirs, and sending all down the valley one night what 
swept away mills, houses and people ; shook but left standing 
one giant chimney, the mill attached to which was carried 
clean away ; caused awful and widespread desolation ; and be- 
queathed to future ages the memory of a terrible catastrophe, 
and the recording chimney to show to what an enormous height 
the waters had risen. Not far off a little grove of Scotch pines, 
which to my eyes always seemed as curst as Wordsworth’s 
“ Hart-leap” trees, preserves the record of a spot where a band of 
Luddites murdered a brave mill owner as he was riding home 
in those riotous times that are so well depicted in Charlotte 
Bronte’s Shirley. 
The whole district was bristling with memories. It had 
been largely peopled by Norwegians, whose thwaites, garths, 
dales, fells, and fosses were all around you. On opposite sides 
of the same river you found Linthwaite and Slaithwaite; and 
Hardraw-force in Foss-dale show well the English forms of the 
Norwegian Slettafos in Romsdal. The termination “ dale ” had 
to my ears a very sweet sound. You had it sometirhes to end a 
short word like Airedale, and it went just as well to terminate 
a long name like Langstrothdale. And fells and garths were 
about everywhere, such as Aysgarth, Crow-garth, Crossfell, 
and Micklefell. At Bournemouth they speak of taking you for 
a drive up the Stour valley, but routes among prettier names 
and far finer scenery are to be found in taking a walk up 
Wharfedale, or down Coverdale or Swaledale. 
The names of people, as of places, varied much here from 
