All Pearson's prose has a dignity and simplicity and directness that makes one realise he had been a reader of the masters of English style, but it makes one feel also that he is a poet at heart, as he writes his prose. Take for example his account of the glede or kite--alas! long vanished from our land, though nesting at the ferry as late as the beginning of last century;--'I have seen,' says he, 'the glede and his beautiful flight, no words of mine can adequately describe it. It was on a windy day in autumn or winter that he generally made his appearance. Imagine a bird measuring five feet between the tips of his wings. To glide along it required apparently no mechanical effort, no fluttering of the wings, not the tremor of a feather. It was not flying but sailing on the bosom of the air, as if by an effort of the will, such ease, such grace, such dignity.' The evenings at Borderside were spent in reading. A mellow musical voice with much feeling in it, would render a passage from some favourite poet, and as often as not the {143} old man's voice would falter and he would say, 'I cannot go on,' and with tears rolling down his cheeks he would put the book down. Perceval Graves, his great friend of the later years, would ofttimes come over for high discourse and heart communion from Dovenest to Borderside. He described those pleasant visits thus: 'And when our cheerful meal was o'er, A meal which friendship seemed to bless And elegance and homeliness With charm we scarce had known before. How swiftly flew the hours away, As thought and feeling deeply stored By mind and heart all forth were poured In loving faith and lively play!' The summer of 1856 was memorable for a waterspout that fell in hay-time on the 8th of August, upon Carnigill, near Borrow Bridge; we who travel by the L.N.W.R. from Tebay to the south can still see the wounds upon the mountain side the fury of the torrent made. The phenomenon was minutely described by the old meteorologist in a letter to Mr. Davy. It was the last August he would see. The long walks over fell and moor gave way to pony-back, and pony-back gave way {144} to a carriage. It was clear to all who knew that delicately chiselled face and noble brow of the yeoman poet and naturalist, that with all his mental powers clear and his eye undimmed, his natural strength was abating. In the spring of 1856 the Winster folk noticed that though he visited, as was his wont, all the orchards for miles round, he visited them in his gig, and men knew by his constant cough that his old enemy, bronchitis, was pressing him sore. But every sunny day found him sitting with his book under the shadow of the famous ash tree at Borderside, and still at night time, if the stars were clear, they saw a tall figure wrapped in a plaid, and stick in hand, pacing slowly the garden path, before the door was shut and lights went out.