At Ambleside there is many a pleasant resting-place in which to recall the pleasures and sum up the impressions of the journey, and to dwell, as many love to do, upon the associations of one and another great name by turns with almost every part of the district. First and foremost is Wordsworth, the poet of nature;--the great "Lake Poet," only because nature here is at her loveliest,--who from his home at Grasmere, and afterwards at Rydal Mount, gave utterance, more richly, truly, deeply, than any writer of his generation, of man's delight in the Creator s work. The association of his name with his beloved lake country is imperishable. Many years ago De Quincey wrote, with reference to Wordsworth's earlier poems, "The very names of the ancient hills--Fairfield, Seat Sandal, Helvellyn, Blen-cathara, Glaramara; the names of the sequestered glens--such as Borrowdale, Martindale, Mardale, Wastdale, and Ennerdale; but, above all, the shy pastoral recesses, not garishly in the world's eye, like Windermere or Der-wentwater, but lurking half unknown to the traveller of that day--Grasmere, for instance, the lovely abode of the poet himself, solitary, and yet sowed, as it were, with a thin diffusion of humble dwellings--here a scattering, and there a clustering, as in the starry heavens--sufficient to afford, at every turn and angle, human remembrances and memorials of time-honoured affections, or of passions (as the 'Churchyard amongst the Mountains' will amply demonstrate), not wanting even in scenic and tragical interest--these were so many local spells upon me, equally poetic and elevating with the Miltonic names of Valdarno and Vallombrosa." * * Works, vol. ii. p. 124. [Illustration: 9168]