ficulty, is said to be a yawning cavern, or like the entrance into the infernal regions, Virgil being lugged in to justify the libel; and a soft, serene, mild, and dewy mist, which in Scotland would pass for a bit of sunshine, is a black and gloomy veil imperfectly hiding the horror of the scene. This drivelling spirit of exaggeration pervades all the valleys, without one single exception. Poor Gray was afraid to proceed up Borrowdale, lest the hills should fall and cover him. Gilpin was eternally agape at cataracts and thunder; and many others have shivered and shuddered on the banks of raging torrents, through which the writer of this article has waded without wetting his jacket, (once, we believe, with Mr Green upon his back,) or over which he has leapt with as much ease as he would write a better Essay than Macvey's on Lord Bacon. From all this folly Mr Green is free. He gives the mountains, rocks, cataracts, and woods, their due. But he knows that they are all quite harmless, if you will only treat them civilly; in traversing a long vale, with superincumbent cliffs, he wisely thinks less of death than dinner; and in place of alarming himself with an ideal picture of shepherds digging him and his portfolio out of the ruins, he is frequently looking about for a snug shop under a precipice, beneath whose steadfast shelter from sun or rain, he may lug out his bread and cheese, and his pocketpistol, pouring forth a libation down his throat to Bacchus, Apollo, Cupid, Vulcan, and Neptune, the Gods, we believe, of Drinking, the Fine Arts, Love, and Geology. A few words as to the style of these volumes. Mr Green speaks of his powers of literary composition with much modesty-the pencil, and not the pen, being his usual weapon. But we have uniformly remarked, that he writes best who has most to say; and, accordingly, Mr Green, having a great deal to say, says it extremely well indeed. Not unfrequently he waxes witty and pleasant, just like ourselves; and there is a simplicity, a naiveté, and bonhommie, about the man himself, which any one who peruses him in his work must like. For our own parts, we have often put the book down, and shook our honest sides with laughter at his ultra-human simplicity. It is our serious intention to pitch our Tent next summer, somewhere or other among these said Lakes. Each of our principal contributors will have a Lake assigned him, and the lesser ones a Tarn. Wastle shall have Windermere-Odoherty, Ullswater-Ourselves, Keswick-and Kemperhausen is perfectly welcome to Coniston. By a judicious distribution of our forces, (all meeting together twice a-week in the Sultan's tent,) the Lakes will find themselves looked at and described in a way they never experienced before: -But now for our good friend, Green. Mr Green supposes the tourist to approach the region of the Lakes, either from Ulverston or from Kendal. Accordingly, the first 132 pages of his first volume are occupied by descriptions of every thing worth seeing from Lancaster, across the Sands, about Furness Abbey, Ulverston, Coniston Lake, and all the scenery about and around it. Coniston Lake never was a favourite of ours; but there are many delightful things about the head of it-Tilberthwaite, Yewdale, &c. &c. &c. all of which Mr Green describes well and accurately, without parade or exaggeration. Our worthy and intelligent author then supposes himself and his readers to be at Kendal, and conducts them by Stavely and Orresthead to Windermere. Upwards of a hundred pages are bestowed on this the Queen of the English Lakes, and all her splendid, and beautiful, and gorgeous possessions of bays, streams, islands, groves, hills, cottages, villas, and villages. We flatter ourselves that we know Windermere as well as the room in which we now sit. We know its shores, we know its surface; and, what is more than what most people can say, we are not altogether unacquainted with its bottom, having frequently dived down among its naiads, with a grace and agility which Lord Byron, in spite of all his swaggering about swimming, might in vain attempt to imitate. We can, therefore, laud Mr Green for his admirable report on this subject. He does not, indeed, go to the bottom of it, as we have done; but nothing visible has escaped him; and he has perambulated and circumnavigated shore and sea with such a prying spirit, as not to have left a creek or a crauny undiscovered. Supposing Ambleside to be the headquarters of the tourist, Mr Green then takes some excursions with him up Great and Little Langdale, &c. &c. and all the majestic scenery of the adjacent district. And, then, in like manner, carries him over Kirkstone, and shews him all the wonders of Ullswater. Haweswater, a Lake not much known to tourists, but extremely beautiful, and forming, it may be almost said, part of the princely demesnes of Lowther, then falls under Mr Green's pencil and pen, both of which do it justice; and then, after touching at Brampton, Shap, &c. he wheels about, and returns to Ambleside. A great deal of curious and novel matter is to be met with in this part of Vol. I. The volume concludes with an ample and minute description of Rydal, Grassmere, and Wythburn Lakes, and of all the scenery, indeed, between Ambleside and Keswick. During the chief part of the first volume Mr Green has supposed his headquarters to be at Ambleside. He now establishes himself at Keswick, and thence makes excursions in every direction, over new ground. Derwentwater itself undergoes as thorough an examination as any lady ever underwent from a custom-house officer on her arrival from France per packet. Borrowdale, Newlands, Buttermere, Crummock-water, Wastwater, Ennerdale Lake, and a thousand other scenes of whose existence the ordinary tourist has no conception, come up phantasmagorially or panorama-wise before us; and, before we get to bed at Penrith, we have described, circle after circle, and square after square, and triangle after triangle, till our head is in a most delightful state of confusion; and we feel that to see the Country of the Lakes as it ought to be seentwenty years (which is about the time Mr Green has taken,) is not a whit too long for a man of moderate powers of locomotion. We have said that Mr Green has given us about 1000 pages of letterpress. These volumes are also enriched with a great number of engravings and etchings, which give a much better and truer picture of the various scenery of the north of England, than all the works of all the other artists of Great Britain. Mr Green is a mannerist no doubt, and has some rather offensive peculiarities, as an artist. But all his faults are as nothing when put into the scales with his great and inanifold merits. His distances and his mists are quite admirable; and the very worst of his views of lake or mountain, brings living nature herself before our imagination. His foregrounds are often heavy and bad, and grievously monotonous. A huge block of black brown stone, that seems as if it had been hewed by some drunken Druid, generally occupies one corner, and he is partial to a tree, which occasionally resembles a birch, but which more frequently looks like a vast number of Indian warrior's heads, turned with their faces from the spectators, with long coarse hair depending, and all stuck upon a bundle of poles of different lengths. Parts too of almost all his foregrounds are meant, we presume, for the smooth verdant lawn close nibbled by sheep, or broused by cattle; but they resemble nothing so much as the backs of shaven porcupines, whose prickles are beginning to sprout. Strange animals too are seen in these foregrounds, some seemingly human. A gentleman is walking arm in arm with a lady, among the ruins of Furness Abbey, certainly without his coat, and we fear without his breeches; and on the border of an English lake, we could not but start. in some alarm to behold a rhinoceros whispering something into the ear of a white bear. These latter animals, we suspect, from the context, to be meant for cattle but we refer to Messrs Curwen and Polito, if they be not much more outlandish and formidable creatures. -- To each volume is appended a list of excursions-each list containing upwards of eighty. The distance from place to place is marked with unfailing accuracy and the lines which these excursions describe intersect the whole country in every imaginable direction. Each excursion is marked with the page of the volume where the scenery through which it leads is particularly described, and these two lists are worth all the living lubberly guides that ever existed. Poor Bobby Partridge excepted-peace to his shade! These volumes, large paper, cost two guineas-small paper, one guinea. The large paper copies have a third more engravings. But both are cheap. The tourist will save many pounds sterling by purchasing Mr Green's Guide; and he will save much valuable time, otherwise lost, from want of good information, or from bad. Mr Green printed the work, we believe, at his own expence; and sincerely do we hope that, in a few summers, he will have disposed of the whole edition. Tourists who visit the Lakes without it, should call on Mr Green, and get a copy from his own hands. And if they do not find it the most useful guide through a country that they ever possessed, we are willing to pay for it. And this leads us to mention that this excellent artist and worthy man has an exhibition of paintings, engravings, etchings, drawings, &c. &c. in his house, Ambleside, (one, too, at Keswick,) which every tourist ought to visit. If before he commences his rambles, he will see there, as in a succession of visions, the beauty and the magnificence of the living nature which he is about to explore; if after, he may there renew his impressions, and take a farewell glimpse of the streams, vales, mountains, lakes, groves, and clouds, which have yielded him such delight. And if he purchase a few of Mr Green's works, (he has them of all prices, from a crown to ten guineas-for that, we believe, is about his highest rate for what is well worth twenty,) he will carry with him fair and faithful representations of places where he has been cheerful or happy, and that will bear looking at, and dreaming upon, in the busy haunts of men, and in the noise of the great city. Finally, Mr Wordsworth has just published in a neat little five shilling duodecimo, (Longman,) an Essay on the scenery of the North of England. It is, as might have been anticipated, full of fine feeling and fine philosophy. He analyzes the country, and shows all the sources of the pleasure which it is peculiarly fitted to yield the enlightened and thoughtful mind. But, after all, the best book to read (we are not now speaking of Guides,) before, during, and after a Tour of the Lakes, is THE LYRICAL BALLADS. I. If we were about to pay a visit to the Lakes, how should we travel? Why, in a gig, or a chaise, to be sure. A pedestrian is a great ass. Feet, it is to be hoped, were given to the human race for some better purpose than walking upon; and that exercise approximates a Christian sadly to a cur. It is all right and fitting that a quadruped, or polyped, like Jock-with-the-many-legs, should go on foot; but a man, being a mere biped, should know better than to walk, except on short journeys across the room, &c., when walking has always appeared to us, except in cases of extreme corpulency, at once one of the elegancies and necessaries of life. But a pedestrian pursuing the picturesque up hill and down dale, ill protected by clouds of dust from a burning sun, with a mouth and throat parched and baked with thirst, brows pouring with sweat, cheeks flaming like a north-west moon, breeches chafing far worse than the sea, and shoes peeling heel and pinching toe, till a walk is of a composite order, including drawl, drag, shuffle, sneak, lumber, and limp. We venture humbly to suggest, that a gentleman so circumstanced must be a prejudiced spectator of the beauties of nature. When the unhappy monster has toiled his way into an inn, what, pray, does he expect? not surely to be treated like a Protestant, or even a Catholic. Can he have the conscience to expect that he shall be suffered to deposit with impunity the extremities of his sweaty and dusty body upon a parlour chair, or absolutely to fling down his loathsome length among the shepherdesses impressed on the pastoral print of a sofa in the North of England? Forbid it, waiter! and shew the pedestrian into the barn. The truth must be told. Pedestrians, male and female, young and old, Dissenters or of the Established Church, have all a smell, to which the smell of goats is as the smell of civets. How can it be otherwise? But, without entering into the rationale of the matter, we just take the fact as we find it; and we declare solemnly, as if these were the last words we were ever to write in this Magazine, that, in the most remote room of the largest inn, we can, nay, must, nose the arrival of a pedestrian, the moment his fetid foot pollutes the clear cool slate-stone of the threshold. This is the truth-not the whole truth; but nothing but the truth. Now, is this fair? Must I-We, we mean-sicken over our dinner, because a prig will waddle in worsted stockings, or socks, as they are with genuine beastliness called? Shall the brock be allowed to badger us, the Editor of this Magazine? But this is not all: he is also a foul feeder. Ale and oil to him are opening paradise. Corned beef and greasy greens are crowded down, full measure, and running over, as our dearly beloved friend Charles Lamb says of the wits of great Eliza's golden days, into the foul recesses of a congenial stomach. Then the Sinner smokes; and after his dense dinner, comes staggering into the lobby, literally talking tobacco-which is not cigar, but shag. Shall he snore in sheets, and blubber in blankets? Yes; and who knows but into his very lair shall next night be laid some sweet spinster of seventeen, half-conscious, by an indescribable instinct, that there is something or another odious in her situation? Or perhaps a couple, ere yet the honeymoon has filled her horns? Why, the very knowledge that such a thing is possible is enough to change a bridal-bed into a pig-stye, in the enamoured imagination of all delicate people. Rats are bad enough, especially when they die behind the wainscot; but what are six dozen of dead rats to one living pedestrian? A foumart is a sweetmart to him. In short, he is as odious as he is unhappy; and the only consolation left to a true Christian is, that he is as unhappy as he is odious. II. A man on horseback is bad enough, but nothing to the polecat now considered. It is probable he is a Bagman-it is possible he is the Bagman. Whichever he be, it is both a moral and physical impossibility that he can be sweet. For look at him as you behold him on the road. He generally despises gloves, or wears them in his pocket. One hand, therefore, grasps the greasy reins, and the other a greasier whip. Look at his nails, and you will swear he has been digging pig-nuts. The palm is cracked horn, and the back is one hairy blister. Up and down he goes on his saddle—not without reason, for he is saddle-sick. Those boots never saw Turner's blacking; they are dim, and redolent of soot and suet. Corduroy breeches are good for hiding the dirt; and divine service has been frequently performed in kirk and cathedral since brush or broomstick disturbed the pepper and salt of that jemmy jockeyfrock. This is your Bagman, travelling among the Lakes for orders. But, for the love of God! go to the fourth inn of the village, if you have one grain of mercy in your whole composition. Over the way yonder, the "Cat and Fiddle" is making a sign for you to enter in; "The Dog" is wagging his tail, and the "Magpie" chattering to her beloved Bagman. There you will find a salve for every sore, there your corduroys will be washed for twopencehalfpenny, there a fresh layer of manure will enrich the soil of your boots, and some beautiful brown soap add paleness and perfume to your mauleys. Why, if you are not a Day and Martin behind the fair, you may make your fortune by marrying the landlord's daughter. III. So much for Pedestrians and Bagmen. Which is the most loathsomely disgusting? We cannot tell. Often, often, when sickening under the one have we sighed for the other, and vice versa. However, to be candid and impartial, as we always are, except in politics, we certainly do know one pedestrian, who, on the whole, is worse than any bagman we have yet experienced. He is a clergyman, and wears spectacles. We wish to mention his name, but that would be personal. Let us therefore describe him as well as we can anonymously. His cheeks are bluff, puffed up, and red as cherries. His mouth is small, of course, but large enough to shew that his teeth are rotten. The puppy wears sailor's clothes, and a black silk handkerchief. That it may be seen he is a gentleman, he sports fine linen and a frill. The wretch seldom shaves. He has a burr in his throat, which sounds like a watchman's rattle made of wet Indian-rubber, if the benevolent reader can imagine such a thing. He talks, with that instrument of speech and torture, of poetry, and painting, and music, and, to crown all, he is a whig. We know of no Bagman half so bad as this; and as he used to infest the Lakes, we wish to put our readers on their guard against this walking nuisance, who, with those traits peculiar to himself combines all the odious characteristics of the ordinary pedestrian. IV. Yet we believe that we are mistaken in alluding to this person as the most odious of all pedestrians. There is an absolute class of them, one and all as odious as he, and they are as follows:-Creatures of literary, metaphysical, and poetical habits, who write, we shall suppose, for the London Magazines. They must all see the Lakes, forsooth, and visit Mr Wordsworth. It is their opinion, we presume, that the language of the peasantry of the North of England is the language of poetry, and they give reasons for the faith that is in them, purloined and parboiled from the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. The bold, true perceptions of a great original genius, become pure idiotry in their adoption by Cockneys; and surely it will be allowed to be most universally disgusting to hear empty-pated praters from Lunnun expounding the principles of one of the profoundest thinkers of the age. These metropolitan ninnies have the unendurable impertinence to take lodgings at Ambleside and Keswick. Now, though a cat may look at a king, a Cockney ought not to be suffered to look at a mountain. But these wretches are wicked enough to wonder, and audacious enough to admire. They commit to the prison of their memory, where a few dwindled ideas, put into confinement, lie in a state of loathsome idleness, scraps of Mr Wordsworth's poems. We would give them up Alice Fell and her duffle cloak, on condition of their stopping with her at Durham; but who, with a heart or a soul, can bear to see them offering indecencies to poor Ruth, "setting her little water-mills by spouts and fountains wild?" Who does not shudder to think that they may have given ostentatious alms to the "Old Cumberland Beggar," as the Kendal Coach was passing by with twenty outsides? These are the reptiles, that, if not trod upon, will occasion a fall in the price of land in the northern counties. V. What, it may be asked, is the best time of the year for visiting the Lakes? Our answer is, any time between the 1st day of January and the last day of December. There is much mouthing, mumping, moping, melancholy, mournful and miserable mummery, in the talk about Autumn. Autumnal tints are all very well in their way, except upon the neck of an aunt or artichoke, where they are not so sweet as seasonable. But to ninety-nine people out of a hundred it is of no earthly consequence, whether tints on trees, and mountains, and so forth, are vernal, (what the deuce is the proper summer adjective?) autumual, or brumal. The colour of the country is good enough at all times, except, perhaps, when the snow happens to be six feet deep, when, loath though we be to dissent from Mr Coleridge, we think white is too much of the prevailing tone, and neither orange nor purple. The chief objection to travelling in a mountainous country in winter, at least after, or during, a heavy fall of snow, seems to be that it is impossible. But, no doubt, a man looking out of his parlour window, with a good rousing fire at his back, and a pretty girl (his wife) in or out of the room-up stairs whipping the children—or down stairs scolding the servants, may pass a few minutes in very agreeable contemplation of nature, even in winter, and on the morning after half-dozen shepherds, and twenty score of sheep, have been lost in the snow. Let, therefore, any man that chuses visit the Lakes in Winter if he can, and we shall not think him mad, only a little crazy. We should suppose that Spring was a season by no means amiss for Lakeing. But the difficulty here, is to know when it is Spring. Many and oft is the time when it has slipped through our fingers without our having felt it; and then, it is to be remembered, that in our Island it comes round only once in seven years. When a tourist is lucky enough to find himself among the Lakes in a bona fide spring season, he will enjoy himself intensely; for the autumnal tints may all go to the devil and shake themselves in comparison with the beautiful glories of mother Earth, and of Father Jove, between the middle of April and the middle of June. Midsummer is often so horridly hot that there is no living comfortably anywhere but in the cellar, except for a few hours in the early morning and the late evening. Then all is voluptuous languor-or bright awakening from a dream--or the divine hush of happy nature sinking again into dewy repose. With plenty of gingerbeer, spruce, cyder, soda, and imperial pop, even the dog days may be made passable; and by kicking off sheets and blankets, and opening the windows of our room, a bed may be prevented from being a stew-pan, or an oven warmed by steam. VI. So much for the best season of Lakeing. Now for the inns. Are the inns good? For the most part excellent. All the head inns are so; and in many places so are the second and third, and even the tail inns. Take, for example, Windermere. Can there be a better inn ever imagined than the White-Lion at Bowness? Impossible. From small beginning, it has risen, like Rome, |