=White Gill=, in Langdale, Westmorland, nearly at the back of the inn at _Millbeck_, derives its chief interest from the loss of the two Greens there, so graphically described by De Quincey. This and the other gills between it and _Stickle Tarn_ afford good climbing up the walls by which they are enclosed. =Winter Climbs.=--Only a few years ago a man who announced that he was going to the Lakes in the depth of winter would have been thought mad. Exclamations of this kind are even now not unfrequently called forth at that season of the year; yet they seem to have little or no effect in diminishing the number of those who year by year find themselves somehow attracted to the little inns which lie at the foot of Snowdon or of Scafell Pikes. On Swiss mountains winter excursions have been made even by ladies, and perhaps the British public was first rendered familiar with the idea by Mrs. Burnaby's book on the subject. But, in truth, the invention is no new one, and those bold innovators who first dared to break through the pale of custom and to visit North Wales or the Lakes in mid-winter were richly repaid for their audacity; for there is hardly any time of year at which a trip to Lakeland is more thoroughly enjoyable. In the first place, there is no crowd. You can be sure that you will get a bed, and that the people of the house will not be, as they too often are in the summer time, too much overworked to have time to make you comfortable, or too full of custom to care much whether you are comfortable or not. Out of doors there is the same delightful difference. You stride cheerily along, freed for a time from the din of toiling cities, and are not harassed at every turn by howling herds of unappreciative 'trippers.' The few who do meet on the mountains are all bent on the same errand and 'mean business'; half-hearted folk who have not quite made up their minds whether they care for the mountains or not, people who come to the Lakes for fashion's sake, or just to be able to say that they have been there, are snugly at home coddling themselves before the fire. You will have no companions but life-long lovers of the mountains, and robust young fellows whose highest ambition is to gain admission to the Alpine Club, or, having gained it, to learn to wield with some appearance of dexterity the ponderous ice-axes which are indispensable to the dignity of their position. Then what views are to be had through the clear, frosty air! How different are the firm outlines of those distant peaks from the hazy indistinctness which usually falls to the lot of the summer tourist! What sensation is more delightful than that of tramping along while the crisp snow crunches under foot, and gazing upward at the lean black crags standing boldly out from the long smooth slopes of dazzling white! There is no great variety of colour; for the rocks, though a few are reddish, are for the most part of grey in varying shades; yet there is no monotony.