resh wind
blowing, and plenty of crows. Do you remember poor papa's favourite
story about the Quaker whom the crows ate on Saddleback? There were
some of the biggest and hoarsest-voiced ones about the cliff that
I've ever had sympathetic croaks from;--and one on the top, or near
it, so big that Downes and Crawley, having Austrian tendencies in
politics, took it for a 'black eagle.' Downes went up capitally,
though I couldn't get him down again, because he _would_ stop to
gather ferns. However, we did it all and came down to Threlkeld--of
the Bridal of Triermain,

"'The King his way pursued
By lonely Threlkeld's waste and wood,'

"in good time for me to dress and, for a wonder, go out to dinner
with Acland's friends the Butlers."

As an episode in this visit to Keswick, ten days were given to the
neighbourhood of Ambleside, "to show Downes Windermere."

"Waterhead, Windermere,

"_10th August, 1867, Evening_.

"I was at Coniston to-day. Our old Waterhead Inn, where I was so
happy playing in the boats, _exists_ no more.--Its place is grown
over with smooth Park grass--the very site of it forgotten! and, a
quarter of a mile down the lake, a vast hotel built in the railroad
station style--making up, I suppose, its fifty or eighty beds, with
coffee-room--smoking-room--and every pestilent and devilish
Yankeeism that money can buy, or speculation plan.

"The depression, whatever its cause, does not affect my strength. I
walked up a long hill on the road to Coniston to-day (gathering
wild raspberries)--then from this new Inn, two miles to the foot of
Coniston Old Man; up it; down again--(necessarily!)--and back to
dinner, without so much as warming myself--not that there was much
danger of doing that at the top; for a keen west wind was blowing
drifts of cloud by at a great pace, and one was glad of the
shelter of the pile of stones, the largest and _oldest_ I ever saw
on a mountain top. I suppose the whole mountain is named from it.
It is of the shape of a beehive, strongly built, about 15 feet high
(so that I made Downes follow me up it before I would allow he had
been at the top of the Old Man) and covered with lichen and short
moss. Lancaster sands and the Irish sea were very beautiful, and so
also the two lakes of Coniston and Wind