_Tuesday, 8th June._--Ellen and I rode to Windermere. We had a fine sunny day, neither hot nor cold. I mounted the horse at the quarry. We had no difficulties or delays but at the gates. I was enchanted with some of the views. From the High Ray the view is very delightful, rich, and festive, water and wood, houses, groves, hedgerows, green fields, and mountains; white houses, large and small. We passed two or three new-looking statesmen's houses. The Curwens' shrubberies looked pitiful enough under the native trees. We put up our horses, ate our dinner by the water-side, and walked up to the Station. We went to the Island, walked round it, and crossed the lake with our horse in the ferry. The shrubs have been cut away in some parts of the island. I observed to the boatman that I did not think it improved. He replied: "We think it is, for one could hardly see the house before." It seems to me to be, however, no better than it was. They have made no natural glades; it is merely a lawn with a few miserable young trees, standing as if they were half-starved. There are no sheep, no cattle upon these lawns. It is neither one thing nor another--neither natural, nor wholly cultivated and artificial, which it was before. And that great house! Mercy upon us! if it _could_ be concealed, it would be well for all who are not pained to see the pleasantest of earthly spots deformed by man. But it _cannot_ be covered. Even the tallest of our old oak trees would not reach to the top of it. When we went into the boat, there were two men standing at the landing-place. One seemed to be about sixty, a man with a jolly red face; he looked as if he might have lived many years in Mr. Curwen's house. He wore a blue jacket and trousers, as the people who live close by Windermere, particularly at the places of chief resort.... He looked significantly at our boatman just as we were rowing off, and said, "Thomas, mind you take the directions off that cask. You know what I mean. It will serve as a blind for them. _You_ know. It was a blind business, both for you, and the coachman, ... and all of us. Mind you take off the directions. 'A wink's as good as a nod with some folks;'" and then he turned round, looking at his companion with an air of self-satisfaction, and deep insight into unknown things! I could hardly help laughing outright at him. The laburnums blossom freely at the island, and in the shrubberies on the shore; they are blighted everywhere else. Roses of various sorts now out. The brooms were in full glory everywhere, "veins of gold" among the copses. The hawthorns in the valley fading away; beautiful upon the hills. We reached home at three o'clock. After tea William went out and walked and wrote that poem, The sun has long been set, etc. He ... walked on our own path and wrote the lines; he called me into the orchard, and there repeated them to me.... _Wednesday, 9th June._-- ... The hawthorns on the mountain sides like orchards in blossom....