The eminent Scotchman already twice mentioned, who is a high-caste laking authority, although his judgment is somewhat warped by his attachment to his own Windermere, says, somewhere, that a man sitting where you do now, might fancy himself looking from the cabin window of a ship at anchor in a beautiful land-locked bay of some island in the South Sea. You don’t know how far that flight may be correct; but you _think_ that the Pacific bays must, in beauty, fall somewhat short of the scene before you. And you are nearer right than the great Christopher, who is out of his latitude in the South Seas, else he had never drawn the pretty-sounding comparison. Though many of the bays in those seas are lovely enough, yet few, as I am told, can come within a day’s sail of Conistone Water, so far as ordinary impressions of the beautiful may bear me out; and the beauties of Conistone, as they are manifold, so are they manifest even to the lowest order of taste, or talent, or whatever the principle may be that enables a common-place man, like myself, to distinguish beauty when he looks at it, and as they are apparent to all, so must they be appreciable by every one, and—but I am waxing enthusiastic, and shall, if I go on, become intolerably nonsensical, for, with me, there is not even the one step between the sublime and the ridiculous; therefore, as I prefer being absurd in verse to being ridiculous in prose, till I cool down a little— “I'll have a shy At Po—e—try.” Conistone, fair Conistone, how vain it were to roam Abroad in search of beauty, with such scenes as thine at home, For, nowhere,—seek the frigid north, or sultry southern clime, Are mingled so the beautiful, the sweet and the sublime. Thy placid lake is beautiful—its winding shores are sweet— Thine Old Man Mountain is sublime, whose top the white clouds greet, As brother greeteth brother, with a hearty, close embrace, And round whose rugged rock-bound sides the sportive cloudlets race. Though other lakes be passing fair,—though fair be “green Grasmere;” Though Rydal boast its herony, and Rydal Mount be near; Though Ullswater be gorgeous, and Bassenthwaite be broad; Though lovely be the lake that holds Saint Herbert’s old abode; Though Crummock slumber pleasantly, 'neath high Scale Force’s roar, “And Butter”-_mere_ “is beautiful, but that you knew before;” Though Wastwater and Ennerdale look sternly dark, but clear; Though Eden-like the islets be of regal Windermere; Though each hath its own beauties, yet amongst them is not one Can boast of beauty varied so as thine, sweet Conistone! Thy rivulets are bright as is air bell or crystal bead, And high, and wild, and lone the Tarns those rivulets that feed.