[Illustration: BLEA TARN AND LANGDALE PIKES.] BRANTWOOD Brantwood was the home of John Ruskin during the latter years of his life. Mr W. G. Collingwood in his life of Ruskin has described the journey to Brantwood, as it was in Ruskin's time, as follows:-- After changing and changing trains, and stopping at many a roadside station, at last you see suddenly, over the wild undulating country, the Coniston Old Man--maen, stone: a survival of Celtic Cumbria--and its crags, abrupt on the left, and the lake, long and narrow, on the right. Across the water, tiny in the distance and quite alone amongst forests and moors, there is Brantwood; and beyond it everything seems uncultivated, uninhabited, except for one grey farmhouse high on the fell, where gaps in the ragged larches show how bleak and storm-swept a spot it is.... You drive up and down a narrow, hilly lane, catching peeps of mountains and sunset through thick, overhanging trees; you turn sharp up through a gate under dark firs and larches; and the carriage stops in what seems in the twilight a sort of court--a gravelled space, one side formed by a rough stone wall crowned with laurels and almost precipitous coppice, the brant (or steep) wood above, and the rest is Brantwood with a capital B. Chapter vi. Vol. ii. _The Life and Work of John Ruskin_. W. G. Collingwood. [Illustration: BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE.] ULLSWATER On April 15th, 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited this lake, and, near Gowbarrow Park, saw the daffodils which he has described in the following poem, and she in her diary. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of the bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced, but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils. [Illustration: ULLSWATER FROM GOWBARROW PARK.] HELVELLYN In the spring of 1805 a gentleman perished by losing his way on Helvellyn. His remains were not discovered till three months afterwards, when they were found guarded by his dog. Sir W. Scott visited the Lake District later on in the same year and composed the following poem:--