"The depression, whatever its cause, does not affect my strength. I walked up a long hill on the road to Coniston to-day (gathering wild raspberries)--then from this new Inn, two miles to the foot of Coniston Old Man; up it; down again--(necessarily!)--and back to dinner, without so much as warming myself--not that there was much danger of doing that at the top; for a keen west wind was blowing drifts of cloud by at a great pace, and one was glad of the shelter of the pile of stones, the largest and _oldest_ I ever saw on a mountain top. I suppose the whole mountain is named from it. It is of the shape of a beehive, strongly built, about 15 feet high (so that I made Downes follow me up it before I would allow he had been at the top of the Old Man) and covered with lichen and short moss. Lancaster sands and the Irish sea were very beautiful, and so also the two lakes of Coniston and Windermere, lying in the vastest space of sweet cultivated country I have ever looked over,--a great part of the view from the Rigi being merely over black pine forest, even on the plains. Well, after dinner, the evening was very beautiful, and I walked up the long hill on the road back from Coniston--and kept ahead of the carriage for two miles: I was sadly vexed when I had to get in: and now--I don't feel as if I had been walking at all--and shall probably lie awake for an hour or two--and feeling as if I had not had exercise enough to send me to sleep." "LANGDALE, _13th August, Evening._