The beauty of the scenery led her to fix upon the English lakes for the locality in which to make her home, and, finding no suitable house vacant, she resolved to build one for herself. She purchased two acres of land, within half-a-mile of the village of Ambleside; borrowed some money on mortgage from a well-to-do cousin; had the plans drawn out under her own instructions, and watched the house being built so that it should suit her own tastes. It is a pretty little gabled house, built of gray stone, and stands upon a small, rocky eminence--whence its name, “The Knoll.” There is enough rock to hold the house, and to allow the formation of a terrace about twenty feet wide in front of the windows, then there comes the descent of the face of the rock. At the foot of the rock is the garden. Narrow flights of steps at either end of the terrace lead down to the greensward and the flower-beds; in the centre of these is a gray granite sun-dial, with the characteristic motto around it: “Come Light! Visit me!” ... Within, “The Knoll” is just a nice little residence for a maiden lady, with her small household, and room for an occasional guest.... The drawing-room has two large windows, one of which descends quite to the floor, and is provided with two or three stone steps outside, so that the inmates may readily step forth on to the terrace. Hunters of celebrities were wont, in the tourist season, not merely to walk round her garden and terrace without leave, but even to mount the steps and flatten the tips of their noses against her window. Objectionable as the liability to this friendly attention would be felt by most of us, it was doubly so to Miss Martineau because of her deafness, which precluded her from receiving warning of her admirers’ approaches by the crunching of their footsteps on the gravel, so that the first intimation she would receive of their presence would be to turn her head by chance and find the flattened nose and the peering eyes against the window-pane. Her principles and her practice went hand-in-hand in her domestic arrangements, as in her life generally; and her kitchen was as airy, light and comfortable for her maids as her drawing-room was for herself. The kitchen, too, was provided with a bookcase for a servants’ library. There lingers no small interest about the guest-chamber, where Harriet Martineau received such guests as Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Emerson, and Douglas Jerrold.... Climbing plants soon covered “The Knoll” on every side. The ivy kept it green through all the year; the porch was embowered in honeysuckle, clematis, passion-flower and Virginia creeper. Wordsworth, Macready, and other friends of note planted trees for Harriet below the terrace. * * * * * [Sidenote: A capable housewife.]