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THE EASEDALE ROMANCE.

THE little valley of Easedale, which, and the neighborhood of which, were the scenes of these interesting events, is, on its own account, one of the most impressive solitudes amongst the mountains of the lake district; and I must pause to describe it. Easedale is impressive, first, as a solitude; for the depth of the seclusion is brought out and forced more pointedly upon the feelings by the thin scattering of houses over its sides, and the surface of what may be called its floor. These are not above five or six at the most; and one, the remotest of the whole, was untenanted for all the thirty years of my acquaintance with the place. Secondly, it is impressive from the excessive loveliness which adorns its little area. This is broken up into small fields and miniature meadows, separated not as too often happens, with sad injury to the beauty of the lake country - by stone walls, but sometimes by little hedge-rows, sometimes by little sparkling, pebbly "beck," lustrous to the very bottom, and not too broad for a child's flying leap; and sometimes by wild selfsown woodlands of birch, alder, holly, mountain ash, and hazel, that meander through the valley, intervening the different estates with natural sylvan marches, and giving cheerfulness in winter, by the bright scarlet of their barrier. It is the character of all the northern English valleys, as I have already remarked — and it is a character first noticed by Wordsworth-that they

assume, in their bottom areas, the level floor-like shape, making everywhere a direct angle with the surrounding hills, and definitely marking out the margin of their outlines; whereas the Welsh valleys have too often the glaring imperfection of the basin shape, which allows no sense of any absolute valley surface; the hills are already commencing at the very centre of what is called the level area. The little valley of Easedale is, in this respect, as highly finished as in every other; and in the Westmoreland spring, which may be considered May and the earlier half of June, whilst the grass in the meadows is yet short from the habit of keeping the sheep on it until a much later period than elsewhere, (viz. until the mountains are so far cleared of snow, and the probability of storms, as to make it safe to send them out on their summer migration,) the little fields of Easedale have the most lawny appearance, and from the humidity of the Westmoreland climate, the most verdant that it is possible to imagine; and on a gentle vernal daywhen vegetation has been far enough advanced to bring out the leaves, an April sun gleaming coyly through the clouds, and genial April rain gently pencilling the light spray of the wood with tiny pearl drops - I have often thought, whilst looking with silent admiration upon this exquisite composition of landscape, with its miniature fields running up like forest glades into miniature woods; its little columns of smoke, breathing up like incense to the household gods, from the hearths of two or three picturesque cottages-abodes of simple primitive manners, and what, from personal knowledge, I will call humble virtue whilst my eyes rested on this charming combination of lawns and shrubberies, I have thought

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that if a scene on this earth could deserve to be sealed up, like the valley of Rasselas, against the intrusion of the world if there were one to which a man would willingly surrender himself a prisoner for the years of a long life that it is this Easedale-which would justify the choice, and recompense the sacrifice. But there is a third advantage possessed by this Easedale, above other rival valleys, in the sublimity of its mountain barriers. In one of its many rocky recesses is seen a "force," (such is the local name for a cataract,) white with foam, descending at all seasons with respectable strength, and, after the melting of snows, with an Alpine violence. Follow the leading of this "force" for three quarters of a mile, and you come to a little mountain lake, locally termed a "tarn" the very finest and most gloomy sublime of its class. From this tarn it was, I doubt not, though applying it to another, that Wordsworth drew the circumstances of his general description:

"Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud,
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And winds

That, if they could, would hurry past:

But that enormous barrier binds it fast.

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And far beyond this " enormous barrier," that thus imprisons the very winds, tower upwards the aspiring heads (usually enveloped in cloud and mist) of Glaramara, Bow Fell, and the other fells of Langdale Head and Borrowdale. Finally, superadded to the other circumstances of solitude, arising out of the rarity of

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human life, and of the signs which mark the goings on of human life, — two other accidents there are of Easedale, which sequester it from the world, and intensify its depth of solitude beyond what could well be looked for or thought possible in any vale within a district so beaten by modern tourists. One is, that it is a chamber within a chamber, or rather a closet within a chambera chapel within a cathedral - a little private oratory within a chapel. For Easedale is, in fact, a dependency of Grasmere — a little recess lying within the same general basin of mountains, but partitioned off by a screen of rock and swelling uplands, so inconsiderable in height, that, when surveyed from the commanding summits of Fairfield or Seat Scandal, they seem to subside into the level area, and melt into the general surface. But, viewed from below, these petty heights form a sufficient partition; which is pierced, however, in two points once by the little murmuring brook threading its silvery line onwards to the lake of Grasmere, and again by a little rough lane, barely capable (and I think not capable in all points) of receiving a post-chaise. This little lane keeps ascending amongst wooded steeps for a quarter of a mile; and then, by a downward course of a hundred yards or so, brings yout to a point at which the little valley suddenly bursts upon you with as full a revelation of its tiny proportions, as the traversing of the wooded back-grounds will permit. The lane carries you at last to a little wooden bridge, practicable for pedestrians; but, for carriages, even the doubtful road, already mentioned, ceases altogether and this fact, coupled with the difficulty of suspecting such a lurking paradise from the high road

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through Grasmere, at every point of which the little hilly partition crowds up into one mass with the capital barriers in the rear, seeming in fact, not so much to blend with them as to be part of them, may account for the fortunate neglect of Easedale in the tourist's route; and also because there is no one separate object, such as a lake or a splendid cataract, to bribe the interest of those. who are hunting after sights; for the "force" is comparatively small, and the tarn is beyond the limits of the vale, as well as difficult of approach.

One other circumstance there is about Easedale, which completes its demarcation, and makes it as entirely a landlocked little park, within a ring-fence of mountains, as ever human art, if rendered capable of dealing with mountains and their arrangement, could have contrived. The sole approach, as I have mentioned, is from Grasmere; and some one outlet there must inevitably be in every vale that can be interesting to a human occupant, since without water it would not be habitable; and running water must force an exit for itself, and, consequently, an inlet for the world; but, properly speaking, there is no other. For, when you explore the remoter end of the vale, at which you suspect some communication with the world outside, you find before you a most formidable amount of climbing, the extent of which can hardly be measured where there is no solitary object of human workmanship or vestige of animal life, not a sheep-track even, not a shepherd's hovel, but rock and heath, heath and rock, tossed about in monotonous confusion. And, after the ascent is mastered, you descend into a second vale- long, narrow, sterile, known by the name of "Far Easedale:" from which point, if

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