example, and avail themselves of the same
privileges: and thus a population, mainly of Danish or Norse origin, as
the dialect indicates, crept on towards the more secluded parts of the
vallies. Chapels, daughters of some distant mother church, are first
erected in the more open and fertile vales, as those of Bowness and
Grasmere, offsets of Kendal: which again, after a period, as the settled
population increases, become motherchurches to smaller edifices,
planted, at length, in almost every dale throughout the country. The
inclosures, formed by the tenantry, are for a long time confined to the
home-steads; and the arable and meadow land of the vales is possessed in
common field; the several portions being marked out by stones, bushes,
or trees; which portions, where the custom has survived, to this day are
called _dales_, from the word _deylen_, to distribute; but, while the
valley was thus lying open, enclosures seem to have taken place upon the
sides of the mountains; because the land there was not intermixed, and
was of little comparative value; and, therefore, small opposition would
be made to its being appropriated by those to whose habitations it was
contiguous. Hence the singular appearance which the sides of many of
these mountains exhibit, intersected, as they are, almost to the summit,
with stone walls. When first erected, these stone fences must have
little disfigured the face of the country; as part of the lines would
every where be hidden by the quantity of native wood then remaining; and
the lines would also be broken (as they still are) by the rocks which
interrupt and vary their course. In the meadows, and in those parts of
the lower grounds where the soil has not been sufficiently drained, and
could not afford a stable foundation, there, when the increasing value
of land, and the inconvenience suffered from intermixed plots of ground
in common field, had induced each inhabitant to enclose his own, they
were compelled to make the fences of alders, willows, and other trees.
These, where the native wood had disappeared, have frequently enriched
the vallies with a sylvan appearance; while the intricate intermixture
of property has given to the fences a graceful irregularity, which,
where large properties are prevalent, and large capitals employed in
agriculture, is unknown. This sylvan appearance is heightened by the
number of ash-trees planted in rows along the quick fences, and along
the walls, for the purp