The wild is the prevailing characteristic of Seathwaite scenery; and, at the same time, it is invested with an air of quietness and repose which prevents its wildness approaching the savage or terrible, though many distinct parts of it, as well as its general aspect, are fully entitled to the epithet of sublime. [Illustration: SEATHWAITE CHAPEL.] CHAPTER V. THE REV. ROBERT WALKER—HIS PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND BREEDING—HABITS OF LIFE—HIS INDUSTRY, ECONOMY, AND HOSPITALITY—HIS WAYS OF MONEYMAKING—HIS DEATH—DESCRIPTION OF HIS OUTER MAN—COMMENTS—GENERAL POVERTY OF THE OLD CLERGY—MARY HIRD—HER CHARACTER AND DEATH. Having fed yourself and seen your pony fed, whilst the latter is enjoying needful rest, you may return to the Chapel and make a more deliberate examination thereof than you could do when you lately passed it on horseback and hungry, and see that you approach that “low, small, modest house of prayer” with befitting reverence for it, and the ground of the humble cemetery around it, in the opinion of greater men than you or I can ever hope to be, are each doubly hallowed, the former as having been for sixty-six years the scene of the labours, and the latter as holding “the mortal dust” of the “Wonderful Walker;” and who, you inquire, was he? and how was he wonderful? I'll tell you all about him in as few words as possible. The Rev. Robert Walker was the youngest child in a family of twelve, who were all born to a small yeoman, at Undercrag, in this dale. He was born in 1709, and being sickly in boyhood, it was determined, in accordance with very general custom in such cases, to “breed him a scholar.” His father died when he was seventeen, and he soon obtained the appointment of parochial [Sidenote: PREFERMENTS AND PROFITS.] teacher at Gosforth, in Cumberland. After labouring there, and in the same capacity at Loweswater for some few years, he was ordained to the living of Buttermere—the smallest Chapel, and, by no means the largest living, in England. His income as incumbent of Buttermere, even though eked out by teaching, being insufficient for his wants, moderate as they were, he worked hard, when his clerical and pedagogical duties permitted, as a common country labourer, span, knitted, and acted as private secretary and scrivener general, and sometimes as marketing agent in sheep, wool, &c., to all his neighbours. Amongst other modes of raising the needful whilst at Buttermere, I have been told by one of his Seathwaite neighbours, that he taught the Buttermerians the art of drawing their lake and the adjacent lake of Crummock with the draught net, and for this service he was paid at the extravagant rate of _one halfpenny_ for every draught they took, whilst he remained amongst them. After this he obtained the living of Torver, a small Chapelry, under Ulverstone, situate a mile or two from Conistone down the west side of the lake; and shortly after that, he attained the great object of his very