Hence, were our researches to begin here, instead of in the Grampian range, the starting point would necessarily be in the Lake mountains. The crystalline primary rocks are developed, though sparingly, in this district; and these, again, are surrounded and overlaid by the lowest fossiliferous deposits, termed by their explorer and historian, “The Cumbrian System.” All the driest details of the science are here too amply relieved by the charming and magnificent scenery amidst which they fall to be wrought out, where the inner and outer arrangements of Nature, in the disposition of her works, are alike fitted to call forth our admiration and delight. The author of “Elia,” who had spent his days in a city life and had a prejudice against every other mode of consuming time, upon his first excursion so far into the country, describes Coleridge as “dwelling upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped on all sides by a net of mountains; great floundering bears and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep.” It was enough; the soul of the man of genius was stirred. He clambered up to the top of Skiddaw; and he waded up the bed of the Lodore; and he satisfied himself, “that there is such a thing as tourists call _romantic_.” But Lamb was never meant for a geologist, and for science of any kind he had no aptitude. The athletic Wordsworth is of a different mold, compacted of different elements, a mind stored with the loveliest images; an understanding capable of sounding the depths of any subject, and a thirst after knowledge from all and every source of visible creation; and yet, mark how disparagingly he pronounces judgment upon the student of unquestionably the most poetical of all the branches of physical inquiry—“that fellow wanderer”— “He who with pocket hammer smites the edge Of luckless rock or prominent stone, The substance classes by some barbarous name, And hurries on; and thinks himself enriched, Wealthier, and doubtless wiser, than before.” But men, it would seem, can no more command their moods of thought than their prejudices. The poetical vein, like the geological, will burst through all restraints to illustrate and vindicate the principles of truth. We have often repeated, recalling them from memory, as the index of our own frame of mind, while searching in the crypts of the primeval world, the beautiful lines—a hymn to Nature’s works, and the study of them— “These barren rocks, our stern inheritance, These fertile fields, that recompense our pains, The shadowy vale, the sunny mountain top, Woods waving in the wind their lofty heads, Or hushed; the roaring waters, and the still. They see the offering of my lifted hands— They hear my lips present their sacrifice— They know if I be silent, morn or even.”