or
frighten "the innocent brightness of the new-born day." We hate all
sentimentalism; but we bid you, in his own words,

"With gentle hand
Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves."

From a quaint platform of evergreens you see a blue gleam of Windermere
over the grove-tops--close at hand are Rydal-hall and its ancient
woods--right opposite the Loughrigg-fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, but
the chief breadth of breast pastoral--and to the right Rydal-mere,
seen, and scarcely seen, through embowering trees, and mountain-masses
bathed in the morning light, and the white-wreathed mists for a little
while longer shrouding their summits. A lately erected private chapel
lifts its little tower from below, surrounded by a green, on which there
are yet no graves--nor do we know if it be intended for a place of
burial. A few houses are sleeping beyond the chapel by the river-side;
and the people beginning to set them in order, here and there a pillar
of smoke ascends into the air, giving cheerfulness and animation to the
scene.

The Lake-Poets! ay, their day is come. The lakes are worthy of the
poets, and the poets of the lakes. That poets should love and live among
lakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on the
Nor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerable
quagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock--so are the Salisbury Craigs
noble craigs--and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he to
leap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in the
Cowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour of
Glaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack of
cards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch poets? Not the Minstrel--he holds by
the tenure of the Tweed. Not Campbell--"he heard in dreams the music of
the Clyde." Not Joanna Baillie--her inspiration was nursed on the
Calder's sylvan banks and the moors of Strathaven. Stream-loving Coila
nurtured Burns; and the Shepherd's grave is close to the cot in which he
was born--within hearing of the Ettrick's mournful voice on its way to
meet the Yarrow. Skiddaw overshadows, and Greta freshens the bower of
him who framed,

"Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song."

Here the woods, mountains, and waters of Rydal imparadise the abode of
the wisest of nature's bards, with whom poetry is religion. And where
was he ever so happy as in that region, he who created "Christabell