masses on the fair surface and flowery banks of Rydal or Ullswater. The roads, too, are often tortuous and narrow. There was a talk at one time of prohibition within Lakeland, and there would seem in equity no justification in this glorious holiday preserve for unlimited vehicles roaring through it at twenty to thirty miles an hour. It lies on no main highway. And for touring use within the district the motor has no single point of sanity. One might almost as well thrash up and down Grasmere in a steam yacht. Their exclusion, with a few exceptions for local purposes or for genuine residents, would be an enormous gain, and any counter plea ridiculously inadequate. I have here pictured Rydal Water as a winsome summer lake, for this I am sure, before most of us who know it, its image rises. [Illustration: RYDALMERE] But upon a spring day some years ago I watched it raging with abnormal frenzy under the influence of a helm wind, cleaving diligently myself in the meantime to a stone wall, lest peradventure I should be blown into its seething waters. These hurricanes are idiosyncrasies of the Lake country, and are formed by the contact of winds from the North Sea with the warmer temperature they meet as they leap over the Pennine range, like a wave breaking over a sea wall. The disturbance thus created drives them down in narrow tornadoes upon Lakeland. I have never experienced anything else like it in these islands. The waters of Rydal on this occasion, now here and now there, were lifted high into the air in the fashion of successive waterspouts and hurled in hissing volumes of sleet at a great elevation against the woody foot of Loughrigg Fell. The sun, too, was shining brilliantly, and every hurtling cloud of spray glittered in prismatic colours. But above all are these two lakes bound up with the name and fame of Wordsworth. From one or other of the banks of them for nearly half a century the great nature poet--the prophet, sage, and interpreter of Lakeland--of whose fruits the world will pluck as long as these hills endure, set forth on his almost daily ramble. Whether this or that generation decide that Wordsworth is among the elect of their fleeting day is an altogether trumpery question. Didactic and complaisant youth have tilted against many a classic and passed into oblivion while the subject of their convincing satire remains immovable as a granite rock. Wordsworth has struck roots so deep into this glorious country, has so identified it with his own personality, that even if he were a much lesser poet, immortal fame would be as surely his as the endurance of Skiddaw or Helvellyn. But Wordsworth has a firmer grip than that of mere atmosphere on unborn generations, though this almost alone would endear him to all those with any sense of feeling who love the Lake country, and of such it is inconceivable that future generations will not each supply their ample store. It is pedantry to