When we ascend to the house, it is through a narrow sort of croft or a wide shrubbery, which you will. The carriage-road goes another way, and here you have only a single footpath, and on your right hand a grassy plot scattered with a few flower-beds, and trees and shrubs, which brings you, by a considerable ascent, to the front of the house, which is screened almost wholly from view by tall trees, among which some are fine maples and red beeches. Here, on the left hand, a little side gate leads to Miss Denton's house, and on the other stretches out the lawn, screened by hedges of laurel and other evergreens. Behind this little lawn, on the right hand of the house, lie one or two kitchen gardens, and passing through these, you come to a wood descending toward the river, which you again find here sweeping around the house. Down this wood or copse, which is half-orchard, and half of forest trees, you see traces of winding footpaths, but all now grown over with grass. The house is deserted; the spirits which animated the scene are fled, some one way, and some another; and there is already a wildness and a desolation about it. The Greta, rushing over its weir beneath this wood, moans in melancholy sympathy with the rest of the scene. You see that great pleasure has sometime been taken in this spot, in these gardens, in this shadowy and steeply descending wood; and the river that runs on beneath, and the melancholy feeling of the dreamlike nature and vanity of human things, its fame and happiness included, seizes irresistibly upon you. A little footpath which runs along the Greta side toward the town deepens this feeling. Through the trees, and behind the river, lie deep and grassy meadows with masses of woodland, having a very Cuyp or Paul Potter look; and, between the higher branches of the trees you see the huge green bulk of Skiddaw, soaring up with fine and almost startling effect. You may imagine Southey walking to and fro along the footpath under the trees, in the fields leading to the town, by another route, and thinking over his topics, while he took the air, and had in view a scene of mountain magnificence, of the effect of which the poet was fully conscious. "The height and extent of the surrounding objects seem to produce a correspondent expansion and elevation of mind, and the silence and solitude contribute to this emotion. You feel as if in another region, almost in another world."[4] Here, too, you may imagine Coleridge lying and dreaming under the trees of the wood within sound of the river. He was here, at one time, a great while. [4] Colloquies, vol. ii. p. 61.