In the volume now offered to his favourable consideration, the reader will find a very sufficient guide to all that is worthy of notice in the neighbourhood it depicts. The accuracy of its descriptions will be apparent when he visits the scenes described. The few anecdotes, traits of character, and sketches, or rather, perhaps, _scratches_, of mountain life can be vouched for as correct, and native to the district. And the information it professes to offer upon topics of supposed interest, local or general, is, when no authority is specified, all deduced from personal observation. These little merits may, perhaps, serve, in some degree, as a set off against its short-comings as a literary composition, and those are now sufficiently manifest even to myself; but in extenuation, I may plead that they are such as may be attributed to inexperience in author-craft, or such as may be looked for in a performance mainly written by way of amusement in the uncertain and brief snatches of relaxation from duties and anxieties of a nature peculiarly unfavourable to the improvement of a faulty style of composition by study or practice. I may state, however, that these duties and cares arise chiefly from an occupation which, more than any other, affords facilities of observing the topographical peculiarities of a district of country, and of noting the characteristics, social and psychological, of its inhabitants of every class. On this latter department of my subject, I should have dilated more freely, had I not been restrained by two salutary considerations, the first being a wish to keep within compass, and avoid prolixity—the second, a desire to live in peace and goodwill with those amongst whom my lot in life is cast. It is not easy to tell the even down truth of a class, any more than of an individual, without exciting wrath. By the way, it is remarkable that, notwithstanding all that has been scribbled anent the Lakes, we are yet without anything like a correct portraiture of the Dales-people. The narratives and traits of character in Mr Wordsworth’s works, though generally striking and beautiful, are, as regards the peasantry, mere emanations of poetic fancy, rather than true delineations of life and manners. The same may be said of Wilson. De Quincey’s papers on the population of the Lake district, are correct only so long as he confines himself to colonists of his own rank. When he comes lower, it is plain enough to those who know the Aborigines, that he has only been permitted to study that, the most interesting, class in their Sunday faces and best behaviour, and that his observation there is rarely more than skin-deep.