English Pictures Drawn with Pen and PencilManning, Samuel
History
English Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Manning, Samuel
England -- Description and travel
We turn reluctantly from this world of beauty, happy in the remembrance
of what we have seen and felt, happier perhaps that so much remains
unvisited in a region where every by-way and secluded dell has its own
peculiar loveliness, and that we may hope to return again and yet again
to explore its wonders. For the mountain climber, are there not Great
Gable, Bowfell, Fairfield, Pillar Mountain in Ennerdale, steepest of
all, Blen-cathara, otherwise Saddleback, with its unequalled view of
Derwentwater, and Coniston Old Man, with its grand prospects over land
and sea? These six are scarcely inferior in height to the imperial
three,* whose names and forms are most familiar. Then the Langdales
should be climbed; one or both, as a position below the loftiest in a
mountain land affords the best point of view from which to apprehend the
grandeur of the surrounding hills. And after the greater lakes have been
duly visited, what wealth of hidden beauty is there in those retired
valleys, where rivulets suddenly expand into fair still sheets of
water, reflecting the mountains at whose base they lie; and what lonely
grandeur in the tarns high among the hills, rarely visited by human
foot, and, like Scales Tarn on Blencathara, so surrounded by wild crags
as hardly ever to admit the sunlight! Excursion after excursion may be
made, not only by the angler, but by those who have no taste for such
sport, to these lofty miniature lakes.
[Illustration: 9171]
Or, if the tourist delights in waterfalls, let him seek out Dungeon
Ghyll in Langdale, or go up behind the inn at Ambleside to Stock Ghyll,
or stop on his way through the valley to admire the two picturesque
Falls at Rydal, or ramble through Gowbarrow Park, near Ullswater, as far
as Airey or Ara Force, which "by Lyulph's Tower speaks from the woody
glen," or let him make a special excursion to Eskdale to see Stanley
Ghyll, described by some tourists as the most beautiful of all. The
beauty of these cascades, and of others less famed, arises not from the
volume of water, but from the picturesqueness of the glens in which they
lie; these being, in almost every case, deep and narrow fissures in the
rock, covered with ferns, mosses and shrubs in the utmost luxuriance.
The varied tints of the rocks and of the foliage by which they are
clothed give richness of colouring to the picture; and when the sunlight
falls upon the dashing spray, and rainbow tints hang over the fall, the
surpassing loveliness of the scene is even enhanced by the smallness of
its scale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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