ream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds of
evanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent flowing
from spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often alive with
waterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the scenery
is fit for fairy festivals--and of many, in its horrid gloom, for
gatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from their
subterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "wooded
Winandermere, the river lake;" and there is another--Ulswater--which you
might imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: the
one excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentle
all, and perfectly beautiful; the other, matchless in its majesty of
cliff and mountain, and in its old forests, among whose hoary gloom is
for ever breaking out the green light of young generations, and
perpetual renovation triumphing over perpetual decay. Of the other
lakes--not river-like--the character may be imagined even from that we
have faintly described of the mountains:--almost every vale has its
lake, or a series of lakes--and though some of them have at times a
stern aspect, and have scenes to show almost of desolation, descending
sheer to the water's edge, or overhanging the depth that looks
profounder in the gloom, yet even these, to eyes and hearts familiar
with their spirit, wear a sweet smile which seldom passes away: witness
Wastwater--with its huge single mountains, and hugest of all the
mountains of England, Scawfell, with its terrific precipices--which, in
the accidents of storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonely
passer-by, savage in the extreme--a howling or dreary wilderness--but in
its enduring character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery,
the deep glen in which it is imbedded being, in good truth, the abode of
Sabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which all
the vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may be
traversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extent
contains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful is
so prevalent, that we feel its presence, even in places where it is
overpowered; and on leaving "The Lakes," our imagination is haunted and
possessed with images, not of dread, but of delight.

We have sometimes been asked, whether the North of England or the
Highlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as the
questi