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ess by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march--so that we may one and all indulge in our own silent fancies--and let not a word be spoken, virgins--under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable--till we crown the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already--and we hear our musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his cottage, the head and shoulders of Windermere are seen in their most majestic shape--and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland, gorgeous land," by gazing on which for an hour we shall all become poets and poetesses. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round--and despises the twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down--from head to foot--from the Brathay to the Leven--of the proper breadth precisely--to a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay--on which the birds love to balance themselves--at low or high water, to be visible longer or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such occasions since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our skiff from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be impaired--so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of its sylvan shores. True, there are flaws in the diamond--but only when the squalls come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood Bay--we are now embarked in Mr Jackson's prettiest pinnace--when the sun is westering--which it now is--surpasses all other bays in fresh-water mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that serenest mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible--but sure she never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of all frames. Pleased she retires--with a wavering motion--and casting "many a longing, lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods; while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger--we really know not which--takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with her crescent-moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white cloud, and just over the silver bow the lustre of one large yellow star. As none of the party complain of hunger, let us crack among us a s
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