“It seems some mountain, rent and riven, A channel to the stream hath given. Where he who winds 'twixt rock and wave, May hear the headlong torrent rave, And like a steed in frantic fit, That flings the froth from curb and bit, May view her—chafe her waves to spray, O'er every rock that bars her way, Till foam-globes on her eddies ride Thick as the schemes of human pride, That down life’s current drive amain As frail, as frothy, and as vain!” [Sidenote: THE “CHERISHED” OF DUDDON.] But you must take my word for all this, for you cannot “wind 'twixt rock and wave” on horseback, therefore keep the good road, whilst you have it. Cross Seathwaite Beck by Nettleslack Bridge, and push on for the little Inn at Newfield, to reach which you must pass between the Chapel and the Parsonage. Behind the latter, you may notice Seathwaite Beck, a tributary of the Duddon nearly as large as itself, which rushes impetuously and noisily along— “Hurrying with lordly Duddon to unite; Who, 'mid a world of images imprest On the calm depth of his transparent breast, Appears to cherish most that torrent white, The fairest, softest, liveliest of them all!” The “torrent white” looks exceedingly black and gloomy under the shadow of these dense overhanging branches, causing the numerous patches of snow-like foam to look “than snow more white” by the contrast. [Sidenote: CHAPEL, PARSONAGE, AND PUBLIC.] Of Seathwaite Chapel Miss Martineau says, “when the traveller reaches the Church, he finds it little loftier or larger than the houses near. But for the bell, he would hardly have noticed it for a Church in approaching: but when he has reached it, there is the porch, and the little grave-yard, and the spreading yews encircled by the seat of stones and turf, where the early comers sit and rest, till the bell calls them in. A little dial on a whitened post in the middle of the enclosure, tells the time to the neighbours who have no clocks.” Miss Martineau may undertake to supply all “the neighbours who have no clock” with that essential article of domestic respectability, for I can answer for it, there is no house in Seathwaite without one. “Just outside the wall,” Miss M. says, “is a white cottage, so humble that the stranger thinks it cannot be the parsonage: yet the climbing roses and glittering evergreens, and clear lattices, and pure uncracked walls, look as if it might be.”