"Keswick, _19th July, '67, Afternoon, 1/2 past 3_.

"My dearest Mother,

"As this is the last post before Sunday I send one more line to say
I've had a delightful forenoon's walk--since 1/2 past ten--by St.
John's Vale, and had pleasant thoughts, and found one of the most
variedly beautiful torrent beds I ever saw in my life; and I feel
that I gain strength, slowly but certainly, every day. The great
good of the place is that I can be content without going on great
excursions which fatigue and do me harm (or else worry me with
problems;)--I am _content_ here with the roadside hedges and
streams; and this contentment is the great thing for health,--and
there is hardly anything to annoy me of absurd or calamitous human
doing; but still this ancient cottage life--very rude and miserable
enough in its torpor--but clean, and calm, not a vile cholera and
plague of bestirred pollution, like back streets in London. There
is also much more real and deep beauty than I expected to find, in
some of the minor pieces of scenery, and in the cloud effects."

"_July 16_.

"I have the secret of extracting sadness from all things, instead
of joy, which is no enviable talisman. Forgive me if I ever write
in a way that may pain you. It is best that you should know, when I
write cheerfully, it is no pretended cheerfulness; so when I am
sad--I think it right to confess it."

"_30th July._

"Downes[14] arrived yesterday quite comfortably and in fine
weather. It is not bad this morning, and I hope to take him for a
walk up Saddleback, which, after all, is the finest, to my mind, of
all the Cumberland hills--though that is not saying much; for they
are much lower in effect, in proportion to their real height, than
I had expected. The beauty of the country is in its quiet roadside
bits, and rusticity of cottage life and shepherd labour. Its
mountains are sorrowfully melted away from my old dreams of them."

[Footnote 14: The gardener at Denmark Hill.]

Next day he "went straight up the steep front of Saddleback by the
central ridge to the summit. It is the finest thing I've yet seen,
there being several bits of real crag-work, and a fine view at the
top over the great plains of Penrith on one side, and the
Cumberland hills, as a chain, on the other. Fine f