e, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a place at
the other end of Ulswater,--I forget the name, [1]--to which we travelled
on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up
to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I
have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as that which tourists
call _romantic_, which I very much suspected before; they make such a
spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till
they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do
after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when she got about
half way up Skiddaw; but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can
be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the
reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most
manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and the bleak air atop of it, with a
prospect of mountains all about and about, making you giddy; and then
Scotland afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and
ballad! It was a day that will stand out like a mountain, I am sure, in
my life. But I am returned (I have now been come home near three weeks;
I was a month out), and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at
first, from being accustomed to wander free as air among mountains, and
bathe in rivers without being controlled by any one, to come home and
_work_. I felt very _little_. I had been dreaming I was a very great
man. But that is going off, and I find I shall conform in time to that
state of life to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after
all, Fleet Street and the Strand are better places to live in for good
and all than amidst Skiddaw. Still, I turn back to those great places
where I wandered about, participating in their greatness. After all, I
could not _live_ in Skiddaw. I could spend a year,--two, three years
among them; but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end
of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is
a fine creature.

My habits are changing, I think,--_i.e._, from drunk to sober. Whether I
shall be happier or not, remains to be proved. I shall certainly be more
happy in a morning; but whether I shall not sacrifice the fat and the
marrow and the kidneys,--_i.e._, the night,--glorious, care-drowning
night, that heals all our wrongs, pours wine into our mortifications,
changes the scene from indifferent and flat to bright