If we take the main road past the head of Coniston, in an easterly direction, and follow it up the steep rise to High Cross, [Illustration: Coniston Lake And the mountain Old Man, on the breast of which is situated the village of Coniston. The view is taken from near Brantwood, Ruskin’s home.] beautiful peeps of Coniston are seen through the woods. Above us on the moor is the romantic sheet of water, Tarn Hows, the favourite stroll of all Coniston _habitués_. The main road continues over the hill, however, and in another mile reaches the quaintest and most old-world village imaginable. This is Hawkshead. Its old market square, pillared houses with outside stairs, quaint nooks entered by roadways passing under the houses, to say nothing of the centuries-old church, and the grammar school, with the actual desk at which Wordsworth learnt his lessons, are at once interesting and amusing. An old epitaph in the Church-yard, visited from far and near, ran as follows:-- “This stone can boast as good a wife As ever lived a married life, And from her marriage to her grave She was never known to misbehave. The tongue which others seldom guide Was never heard to blame or chide, From every folly always free, She was what others ought to be.” It is sad to reflect that the above was erased by the lady’s sons-in-law, for the prosaic reason that “it wasn’t true”! To Hawkshead belongs Esthwaite Water, a reposeful sylvan lakelet, quite different from the more northerly meres, but nevertheless very alluring in its own way, with distant Langdale Pikes and Bowfell a shimmering, almost unreal, background. In actual distance it is not far from Hawkshead to Wastwater, but there is an entire contrast in the character of their scenery. Wastwater is the grandest of the lakes and is possessed of a wild, sombre beauty. Grouped around its head are Scawfell, Great Gable, Kirk Fell, Yewbarrow and the wild mass of the Pillar, the highest and most rugged of Lakeland’s mountains while--rising directly from the very edge of the water--the boulder-strewn slopes of the Screes, crowned at a height of 1,000 feet by magnificent bastions of rock, confine the southern side of the lake in almost its entire length. It is a very weird sensation to row along the lake under these Screes and see them plunge straight down into the water, until they merge into the blackness of its depths. This is the deepest of the lakes, and the steep angle of the mountain is continued under water for two hundred and fifty-eight feet. Wastwater is open to the west, whence an excellent road leads from Seascale, on the Furness Railway, up to Wastdale Head, the small village about a mile beyond the head of the lake.