range-olive; then the lake of a bright olive-green, nearly the same
tint as the snow-powdered mountain tops and high slopes in Easedale; and
lastly, the church, with its firs, forming the centre of the view. Next
to the church came nine distinguishable hills, six of them with woody
sides turned towards us, all of them oak-copses with their bright red
leaves and snow-powdered twigs; these hills--so variously situated in
relation to each other, and to the view in general, so variously
powdered, some only enough to give the herbage a rich brown tint, one
intensely white and lighting up all the others--were yet so placed, as
in the most inobtrusive manner to harmonise by contrast with a perfect
naked, snowless bleak summit in the far distance.'

Having spoken of the forms, surface, and colour of the mountains, let us
descend into the VALES. Though these have been represented under the
general image of the spokes of a wheel, they are, for the most part,
winding; the windings of many being abrupt and intricate. And, it may be
observed, that, in one circumstance, the general shape of them all has
been determined by that primitive conformation through which so many
became receptacles of lakes. For they are not formed, as are most of the
celebrated Welsh vallies, by an approximation of the sloping bases of
the opposite mountains towards each other, leaving little more between
than a channel for the passage of a hasty river; but the bottom of these
vallies is mostly a spacious and gently declining area, apparently level
as the floor of a temple, or the surface of a lake, and broken in many
cases, by rocks and hills, which rise up like islands from the plain. In
such of the vallies as make many windings, these level areas open upon
the traveller in succession, divided from each other sometimes by a
mutual approximation of the hills, leaving only passage for a river,
sometimes by correspondent windings, without such approximation; and
sometimes by a bold advance of one mountain towards that which is
opposite it. It may here be observed with propriety that the several
rocks and hills, which have been described as rising up like islands
from the level area of the vale, have regulated the choice of the
inhabitants in the situation of their dwellings. Where none of these
are found, and the inclination of the ground is not sufficiently rapid
easily to carry off the waters, (as in the higher part of Langdale, for
instance,) the houses are