An impression is general that the people employed here are more than ordinarily “ignorant and profligate.” Nothing could be farther from the truth than such a supposition. They, doubtless, have their share of the failings of human nature, and many enjoy themselves rather freely at the month’s end, when they receive their pay, but open or obtrusive profligacy is very rare, and their ignorance is certainly not so general as that of the pastoral and agricultural population around them. And I maintain that, in kindness to each other, in the proper discharge of the duties of domestic life, in demonstrative respect for those above them, in real civility to strangers, though accompanied perhaps, in some instances, by gruffness of manner, the mining population of Conistone are not to be surpassed by any other of equal numbers in the world, and are certainly not equalled by any that I have been amongst. I have now nothing more to say about either mines or miners, but leave you to divest yourself of your miners' habiliments, and cleanse your fingers from the candle grease at your leisure. CHAPTER IX. THE OLD MAN. ASCENT FROM THE MINES—THE KERNEL CRAG RAVENS—PADDY' END AND SIMON’ NICK—LEVERSWATER, &C.— THE SUMMIT—“OLD MAN,” UNDE DERIVATUR—ENUMERATION OF OBJECTS SEEN FROM THE SUMMIT—MOUNTAIN AND MERE—DALE AND DOWN—SEA AND SHORE—TOWER AND TOWN—THE DESCENT. It were well now to delay no longer the favourite and finest of all Conistonian excursions; therefore again gird your loins with strength, and prepare to ascend the Old Man. For that purpose, I think the pleasantest, though not the nearest route is directly past the Mines; so, leaving on your right the works you have been inspecting, you take a very rough and very steep cart-road winding its weary way up the mountain, and pass between another more elevated and more recent range of works and workings styled Paddy'-end—after the discoverer of the richness of the veins in that direction—and a high precipice of solid stone called Kernel Crag. On this crag, probably for ages, a pair of ravens have annually had their nest, and though their young have again and again been destroyed by the shepherds, they always return to this favourite spot; and frequently, when one of the parents has been shot in the brooding season, the survivor has immediately been provided with another helpmate; and, what is still more extraordinary, and beautifully and literally illustrative of a certain impressive scripture passage—it happened, a year or two since, that both the parent birds were shot, whilst the nest was full of unfledged young, and their duties were immediately undertaken by a couple of strange ravens, who attended assiduously to the wants of the orphan brood, until they were fit to forage for themselves. [Sidenote: FATAL INDISCRETION.]