e following description, (given in his Poem of the 'Excursion')
supposing the spectator to look down upon it, not from the road, but
from one of its elevated sides.

'Behold!
Beneath our feet, a little lowly Vale,
A lowly Vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains; even as if the spot
Had been, from eldest time by wish of theirs,
So placed, to be shut out from all the world!
Urn-like it was in shape, deep as an Urn;
With rocks encompassed, save that to the South
Was one small opening, where a heath-clad ridge
Supplied a boundary less abrupt and close;
A quiet treeless nook,[48] with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glittered in the sun,
And one bare Dwelling; one Abode, no more!
It seemed the home of poverty and toil,
Though not of want: the little fields, made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,
Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland House.
--There crows the Cock, single in his domain:
The small birds find in Spring no thicket there
To shroud them; only from the neighbouring Vales
The Cuckoo, straggling up to the hill tops,
Shouteth faint tidings of some gladder place.'

[47] Mr. Green's Guide to the Lakes, in two vols., contains a complete
Magazine of minute and accurate information of this kind, with the names
of mountains, streams, &c.

[48] No longer strictly applicable, on account of recent plantations.

From this little Vale return towards Ambleside by Great Langdale,
stopping, if there be time, to see Dungeon-ghyll waterfall.

The Lake of

CONISTON

May be conveniently visited from Ambleside, but is seen to most
advantage by entering the country over the Sands from Lancaster. The
Stranger, from the moment he sets his foot on those Sands, seems to
leave the turmoil and traffic of the world behind him; and, crossing the
majestic plain whence the sea has retired, he beholds, rising apparently
from its base, the cluster of mountains among which he is going to
wander, and towards whose recesses, by the Vale of Coniston, he is
gradually and peacefully led. From the Inn at the head of Coniston Lake,
a leisurely Traveller might have much pleasure in looking into Yewdale
and Tilberthwaite, returning to his Inn from the head of Yewdale by a
mountain track which has the farm of Tarn Hows, a little on the right:
by this road is seen much the best view of Coniston Lake from the south.
At the head of