"The rugged, dissimilar, and frequently grotesque and fanciful appearance of the rocks distinguish the scenery of this valley from perhaps every other in the kingdom. In some places they shoot up in detached masses, in the form of spires or conical pyramids, to the height of 30 or 40 yards.... One rock, distinguished by the name of the Pike, from its spiry form and situation in the midst of the stream, was noticed in the second part of 'The Complete Angler', by Charles Cotton," etc. etc. ('The Beauties of England and Wales,' Derbyshire, vol. iii, pp. 425, 426, and 431. London, 1810.) Potts speaks of the "pellucid waters" of the Dove. "It is transparent to the bottom." (See Whately, 'Observations on Modern Gardening', p. 114.)--Ed.] [Footnote L: Doubtless Wharfedale, Wensleydale, and Swaledale.--Ed.] [Footnote M: Compare 'Paradise Lost', v. 310, and in Chapman's 'Blind Beggar of Alexandria': 'Now see a morning in an evening rise.' Ed.] [Footnote N: For glimpses of the friendship of Dorothy Wordsworth and Coleridge, see the 'Life' of the poet in the last volume of this edition.--Ed.] [Footnote O: The absence referred to--"separation desolate"--may refer both to the Hawkshead years, and to those spent at Cambridge; but doubtless the brother and sister met at Penrith, in vacation time from Hawkshead School; and, after William Wordsworth had gone to the university, Dorothy visited Cambridge, while the brother spent the Christmas holidays of 1790 at Forncett Rectory in Norfolk, where his sister was then staying, and where she spent several years with their uncle Cookson, the Canon of Windsor. It is more probable that the "separation desolate" refers to the interval between this Christmas of 1790 and their reunion at Halifax in 1794. In a letter dated Forncett, August 30, 1793, Dorothy says, referring to her brother, "It is nearly three years since we parted."--Ed.] [Footnote P: Thomas Wilkinson's poem on the River Emont had been written in 1787, but was not published till 1824.--Ed.] [Footnote Q: Brougham Castle, at the junction of the Lowther and the Emont, about a mile out of Penrith, south-east, on the Appleby road. This castle is associated with other poems. See the 'Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle'.--Ed.] [Footnote R: Sir Philip Sidney, author of 'Arcadia'.--Ed.] [Footnote S: Mary Hutchinson.--Ed.] [Footnote T: The Border Beacon is the hill to the north-east of Penrith. It is now covered with wood, but was in Wordsworth's time a "bare fell."--Ed.] [Footnote U: He had gone to Malta, "in search of health."--Ed.] [Footnote V: The Etesian gales are the mild north winds of the Mediterranean, which are periodical, lasting about six weeks in spring and autumn.--Ed.] [Footnote W: A blue-coat boy in London.--Ed.] [Footnote X: Christ's Hospital. Compare Charles Lamb's 'Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago'.