Westmoreland and Cumberland in the Summer of MDCCXCI., originally
published in the _Whitehall Evening Post_, and now reprinted with
additions and corrections.... By A. Walker, Lecturer,' &c. 1792, 8vo.
Wordsworth could not have failed to be interested in the descriptions of
this overlooked book. They are open-eyed, open-eared, and vivid. I would
refer especially to the Letters on Windermere, pp. 58-60, and indeed all
on the Lakes. Space can only be found for a short quotation on Ambleside
(Letter xiii., August 18, 1791): 'We now leave Low Wood, and along the
verge of the Lake have a pleasing couple of miles to Ambleside. This is
a straggling little market-town, made up of rough-cast white houses, but
charmingly situated in the centre of three radiant vallies, _i.e._ all
issuing from the town as from a centre. This shows the propriety of the
Roman station situated near the west end of this place, called
Amboglana, commanding one of the most difficult passes in England....
Beautiful woods rise half-way up the sides of the mountains from
Ambleside, and seem wishful to cover the naked asperities of the
country; but the Iron Works calling for them in the character of
charcoal every fourteen or fifteen years, exposes the nakedness of the
country. Among these woods and mountains are many frightful precipices
and roaring cascades. In a still evening several are heard at once, in
various keys, forming a kind of savage music; one, half a mile above the
town in a wood, seems upwards of a hundred feet fall.--About as much
water as is in the New River precipitates itself over a perpendicular
rock into a natural bason, where it seems to recover from its fall
before it takes a second and a third tumble over huge stones that break
it into a number of streams. It suffers not this outrage quietly, for it
grumbles through hollow glens and stone cavities all the way, till it
meets the Rothay, when it quietly enters the Lake' (pp. 71-3). It is odd
that a book so matterful, and containing many descriptions equal to this
of Ambleside, should be so absolutely gone out of sight. It is a
considerable volume, and pp. 1-114 are devoted to the Lake region.
Walker, in 1787, issued anonymously 'An Hasty Sketch of a Tour through
Part of the Austrian Netherlands, &c.... By an English Gentleman.'

P. 264. Quotation from (eheu! eheu!) the still unpublished poem of
'Grasmere.'

P. 274. Quotation from Spenser, 'Fairy Queen,' b. iii. c. v. st. 39-40.
In s