In the village road, for street there is none, not a creature is to be seen, save where a few brown or mottled “short-horns” straggle up from the meadows,—now stopping to stare vacantly about them, now capering purposeless with uplifted tails, or butting frolicsome at each other; then marching to the brook, and standing knee-deep in the scurrying waters, with their brown heads bent down to drink, and the rapid current curling white around their legs, while others go leaping through the stream, splashing the waters in transparent sheets about them. Not a fowl is to be seen scratching at the soil, nor duck waddling pompously toward the stream. Not even a stray dog crosses the roadway, unless it be on the Sunday, and then every peasant or farmer who ascends the road has his sharp-nosed, shaggy sheep-dog following at his heels, and vying with his master in the enjoyment of their mutual holiday. Here, too, ofttimes may be seen some aged dame, with large white cap, and bright red kerchief pinned across her bosom, stooping to dip her pail into the brook; while over the bridge, just showing above the coping-stone, appears the grey-coated farmer, with drab hat, and mounted on his shaggy brown pony, on his way to the neighbouring market. Here, too, the visitor may sometimes see the farmers’ wives grouped outside one of the homestead gates—watching their little lasses set forth on their five-mile pilgrimage to school, their baskets filled with their week’s provisions hanging on their arms, and the hoods of their blue-grey cloaks dancing as they skip playfully along, thoughtless of the six days’ absence, or mountain road before them. At other times, some good-wife or ruddy servant girl, sallies briskly from the neighbouring farm, and dodges across the road the truant pig that has dashed boldly from the midden. Anon, climbing the mountain side, saunters some low-built empty cart, with white horse, and grey-coated carter, now, as it winds up the road, hidden by the church, now disappearing in the circling of the path behind the slope, then seen high above the little belfry, and hanging, as it were, by the hill side, as the carter pauses to talk with the pedlar, who, half buried in his pack, descends the mountain on his way to the village. Then, again ascending, goes the cart, higher and higher, till it reach the highest platform, to vanish behind the mountain altogether from the sight. Such, reader, is a faint pen-and-ink sketch of a few of the charms and rural graces of Buttermere. That many come to see, and but few to appreciate them, the visitors’ book of the principal inn may be cited as unquestionable evidence. Such a book in such a scene one would expect to find filled with sentiments approximating to refinement, at least, if not to poetry; but the mountains here seem more strongly to affect the appetite of Southerners than their imaginations, as witness the under-written, which are cited in all their bare and gross literality.