It would hardly be possible to omit, in any notice of the Lake district, however incomplete, a reference to the great uncertainty of the weather. In the deeper valleys, especially, as Wastdale and Buttermere, the traveller is often sorely disappointed by incessant rain. Yet even this has its compensation in the increased translucency of the air, the beauty of the mountain streams and cascades, with the incomparable splendours of the parting clouds, when the sunlight has smitten them apart, and their white trains vanishing up the mountain-side are as the robes of angels. When the summer airs elsewhere are stifling, and the ground is parched, the effect of the frequent mists and showers is fully seen. For then the whole lake country is as green as an emerald; and, except in the deepest valleys, the wearied brain and limbs are refreshed by stimulating mountain airs. Such seasons perhaps are the best for a visit to the Lakes; but they are beautiful in winter too, when the snows linger on the heights, and in the early spring, when the greensward is carpeted with wild flowers, and in the autumn, when the purple, gold, and crimson clothe the woods in a royal array, while the withered Reaves elsewhere strew all the ground. "Those only know our country," say the dwellers among the lakes, "who live here all the year round." Be it so. It is good to carry in memory, into the busy, more prosaic walks of life, the glimpse, if it be no more, of all this beauty; and, after all, it is the "still sad music of humanity" that thrills the soul more deeply than the music of the whispering woods, or of the torrent down the mountain side. It was the Poet of the Lakes and Mountains who closed one of the noblest of his odes by the words: "Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, its fears; To me, the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." [Illustration: 0174] THE EASTERN COUNTIES [Illustration: 0175] |John Foster quaintly says that "the characteristic of genius is, that it can light its own fire:" he might have added that it can provide its own fuel. Mere talent is mainly dependent upon adventitious aids and favourable circumstances, whilst genius can work with the clumsiest tools and the most intractable materials. The magnificent scenery of Switzerland and the Scotch Highlands has produced no artist or poet of the first rank. The featureless landscape of Holland or of East Anglia sufficed for Cuyp or Hobbema, or Ruysdael, for Gainsborough or Constable, or Old: Crome. The quiet loveliness of Warwickshire was enough for Shakspere's genius. Milton had seen the glories of the Alps and Apennines, but Buckinghamshire furnished the subject-matter of _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_. The dreary flats of Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire cease to be dull and prosaic in Cowper s verse.