It was reserved for a lady to give us the best essay upon the peculiarities of our aboriginal character; but even Miss Martineau, with all her female penetration, and her more than female genius and talent for observation, is, in that part of her work, oddly astray in her illustrations and erroneous in her assertions. For instance, she avers that our women-folk are all mutes. On this it is only necessary to remark that some of their husbands, and that I, myself, not unfrequently, nor yet unfervently, wish that Miss Martineau’s averment had better foundation. Bating this defect, her work on the Lakes, taking it for all in all, is the best, and by far the cheapest, of all Lake books, and _their_ name is Legion! One word more. I have been accused of using irreverently a name which it is the fashion now for all to revere. I should be truly sorry, could I fancy I had afforded real grounds for such accusation. If the opinion of one so obscure as I could be of any importance, I might truly declare that I yield to none in my respect for Mr Wordsworth’s character—that few can estimate the poetic grandeur and fine moral feeling of his truly great poems more highly than I; and if I have hinted at what I consider defects in his genius and philosophy, as exhibited in his works, who shall censure me for expressing an honest opinion, even though the mode of expressing it be a trifle more flippant than the subject may seem to warrant? It were as reasonable to extinguish a small luminary for announcing a fancied discovery of spots upon the sun, as to demolish me for fancying that I discern a few specks upon the otherwise resplendent disc of the great light of our Lakes. Entreating the gracious patience of the reader for having spun a plain unvarnished tale at such a length, and bespeaking his more gracious indulgence to the manifold faults in “my von leetle performance,” as Signor Blitz used to call his conjuring tricks, I beg to subscribe myself the reader's Very humble servant, A. C. G. Yewdale Bridge, May 21st, 1849. RAVINGS AND RAMBLINGS ROUND CONISTONE. CHAPTER I. GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION—ETYMOLOGY—ATTRACTIONS—A STRING OF AUTHORITIES—THE LAKE—ITS ATTRIBUTES—STATISTIC—PISCATORIAL—COMMERCIAL—FATAL, AND SCENIC. Conistone, anciently Conyngstone and Cunyngstone, is situated in that isolated portion of Lancashire which, divided from the mother county by Morecambe Bay, bears the general designation of Lonsdale North of the Sands, and in the extensive sub-division of Lonsdale North called High Furness, which, the map will tell you, lies between Windermere and the Duddon, and between the Brathay, in Little Langdale, and Low Furness. [Sidenote: A BAKER’S DOZEN OF PANEGYRISTS]