LAKE PAPERS. BY LAUNCELOT CROSS. No. V. ROBERT SOUTHEY. COME forth into the light of things, She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless- WORDSWORTH. KESWICK was our first lake-love. We visited it before the railway awoke the echoes of Blencathra, and shook the sleepy romance out of Threlkeld. A coach and four bore us from Penrith to the metropolis of the lakes. Ah, that was in the spring time of youth! During the evening we had climbed the Beacon at Penrith and got a glimpse our first glimpse of the land to which we were bound. It was a thrilling moment when, through an opening in the trees, we beheld the region of our dreams and cur hopes, afar, but clearly, and knew that of a certainty we should be within it on the morrow. The morning was beautiful, the drive exhilirating-stern and rigidly conical as it was, we hailed with delight Pell-Mell—the first lake hill which we passed. After that, we came to the great northern mountain chain, and we scarcely dared to give any the preference for grandeur of form over another. That day we climbed Skiddaw, and from her elbow-a third of the distance up-got one of the most ecstatic views that we have ever seen, and which can only be equalled by what is obtained from Castle Head and Castlerigg. Bassenthwaite to the right; Derwentwater far in front of us; the intervening plain on which stand Keswick and a score of distant separated villages; the charming, shy St. John's Vale, peeping out from the hills to the left; the glorious throngs of mountains, each for grandeur of outline, green sweetness, or massiveness, seeming to claim attention, and yet as a whole making a complete and sublime spectacle, and all steeped in the golden light of an autumn sun. It was almost more than the senses could bear. Even at the remembrance a swooning feeling comes over us. Our heart swims to bliss. Thank God, we have lived to know it! That same evening we rowed in the dusk upon Derwentwater with cur companion. We pulled towards Lodore. Our way darkened as we proceeded. The sides of the high-stretching Wallow Crag and Falcon Crag-beneath which we were rowinggrew palpably blacker and blacker every moment. Then came an inexplicable glimmer on the water between us and Keswick. It increased. We involuntarily suspended our oars. Our friend who sat behind us laid his hand upon our shoulder. We turned round, and both of us looked in silence, spell-bound, on the large golden moon which, unobserved, had risen over the Lady's Rake, and now looked full into the vale. It seemed as though Cynthia had a special mission. That she came to gaze at us--to learn our experience of awe and wonder on this our first visit to the Lakes. Later on we got another surprise. Giving a shout for some playful purpose we found that it was echoed by the westward mountains. On the discovery we made a very carnival of noise. We have tried the experiment since, but never succeeded. There must at that time have been a favouring air which conveyed into the heart of the mountains the vibrations from the bosom of the lake; and yet so gentle must have been the air that it did not prevent the thunder and the dying fall of the echoes coming back to the vale. We learned afterwards that people on the shore had been surprised and delighted at the phenomenon, at the same time they could not produce it. We shouted. The noise clanged over the waterpaused then for a moment as though expended. Thea a mountain, deep in Newlands Vale, thundered forth the words. This was taken up by a nearer mountain-thrown down the vale again—then a score of hills quickly rattled the sound, as though they were clapping their hands; once more the sound came out nearer and more distinctly, and finally down the remotest files of mountains our words were faintly being repeated as if they were carried as a message to the ocean. There was a pleasing awe in the sport. We never laughed although we were in a merry mood. Indeed, the evening was probably the most solemn we ever spent yet was there lightheartedness. We should have been oppressed had there not been the unwhispered, the then unrecognised assurance, moving deep in the fountain of the heart, that in nature there breathes love for man and every strong sustaining power. Other tender reminiscences have we of spots over which Keswick claims special sovereignty,-of the great circle for a summer's day which combines the rugged vale of Borrodale, the terrors of Honister Pass, the subdued sweetness of Bustmere, and the green tenderness of the Vale of Newlands; of a midnight row to Lodore, adventures in the dense darkness amidst ius rocks and dashing waters, and fantastic feats thereafter in the moonlight on our homeward road; of a lonely Sabbath, when we had the rich experiences that balong alone to solitude, on the velve sides of Ca: Bells, aud of watery rambles round the island-dearest of which is that of St. Herbert, whose heart beat so in unison with that of St. Cuthbert, of Durham, that he did pray that they might die the self-same day," nay, at the same instans of time, and so it did happen a roon, coo, upon the take when all was goen joy, the waters so clear that we saw along all the watery way the weeds hat grew at the bo.com of the lake; and Gloriana and Creysostom were there ; and when we brought them to the top of Castle Head and made them behold all the glories of the lard, e latter, after some moments of mute astonishmeat, murmured, " If she helds of heaven, my friend, are fairer than these, hey must be oeautiful, indeed!" Those days are gone, with all their dizzy raptures, and Chrysostom now knows how much fairer are the fields of heaven than those of Keswick. So much, momentarily, of the place. Now for the man who is associated with it-ROBERT SOUTHEY-who for forty years lived and worked in Greta Hall, and who now sleeps in Crosthwaite Churchyard. Soutbey is recognised as one of the best types of the literary character. Spotless in reputation-throughout life identified with domestic felicities-working at literary labour for his household needs, yet moving in a sphere where the labour brings its highest market value; so methodical that each day was portioned to the various works of poetry and prose with which he was engaged; yet bis household affections suffering no chill from his enflagging industry. la him we find none of the vacillation of Coleridge, none of the wildness and mountain passion of Wilson, none of the hermit seclusion and oneness of purpose of Wordsworth, bui gentle persistency, fireside cordial ty, and sustained intercourse with the busy centres of intelligence and commerce. This is a man in and upon whom the lake aЯuences work in a different manner to what they did in the minds we have already studied. And it is deeply interesting to note their manufestations in this class of pure intellect. Southey was born in August, 1774. A twenty-one years of age he published bis "Wat Tyler," married, and made his first visit to Spain. It is this last fact tha most pertinendly bears on our subject. These travels tinctured his whole life. The immediate result was to make him shrink from busy towns as a dwelling place. In 1796 ie writes: "I have an unspeakable loathing for that huge city, London." Again: "London is as bad for the mind as the body. . . In the country everything is good, everything in nature is beautiful." And the irrepressible desire of his soul is shown at the period of his life. At one time he cries : “A field thistle to me is worth all the flowers of Covent Garden;" at another: "I want a quiet, lonely place, in sight of something green.” Five years later he made a second and prolonged stay in Spain and Portugal. And then, and through life, did he rave of Cintra, and of the iittle islands of beauty amid the deserts of the Alentego, and of the Tagus, which for richness and grandeur surpassed all that he beheld, and of Coimbra---its cypresses, and orange groves, and olives, its hills and mountains, its venerable buildings, and its dear river. Nay, hear him thirty years after, when surveying a blissful scene on his own Derwentwater :-“My place was on the bough of the ash tree at a little distance, the water flowing at my feet, and the fall just below me. Among all the sights and sounds of nature there are none which affect me more pleasurably than these. I could sit for hours to watch the motion of a brook; and, when I call to mind the happy summer and autumn which I passed at Cintra, in the morning of life and hope, the perpetual gurgling of its tanks and fountains occurs among the vivid recollections of that earthly paradise as one of its charms.” Whilst in Spain, Coleridge was residing in Greta Hall, at Keswick, and wrote Southey a description of his residence, which has commended itself to our guide-books, and, indeed, is a finer description than any that Southey gave of the spot that became his life-long home: “Our house stands on a low hill. Behind the house is an orchard, and a small wood on a steep slope, at the foot of which flows the river Greta, which winds round and catches the evening lights in the front of the house. In front we have a giant's camp-an encamped army of tent-like mountains, which, by an inverted arch, gives a view of another vale. On our right the lovely vale and the wedge-shaped lake of Bassenthewaite; and on left Derwentwater and Lodore in full view, and the fantastic mountains of Borrodale. Behind us the massy Skiddaw, smooth, green, and high, with two chasms and a tent-like ridge in the larger. A fairer scene you have not seen in all your wanderings." Southey was not attracted by Coleridge's warmth and admiration. He could not look with comfort to a home in the lakes. His blood, burning from the embraces of the southern sun, was chilled by their mists and grey mountains. When be did come to try how he would like to make his nest under their shadows, he came doubting and reluctantly. Come, however, he did ; he came . within the year, and left them nevermore. In a short twelve months he confesses that familiarity with the mountains makes their sublimity felt and understood; nay, he becomes warm as a lover, and speaks of the "eye-wantonnes of lakes and mountains," and ere two years have gone by he is dogmatic. He then writes: "Would that you could see these lakes and mountains! How wonderful they are! How awful in their beauty! All the poet part of me will be fed and fostered here," and he tempts his brother with the scene which we quote below as The Mountains in October." Ten years later and he calls it "the Land of Loveliness." So vain did he become of the residence he had selected that he affirmed it to be "the very finest spot in the whole lake country." In which words we discover the very artifice by which love is known-the imaginative play which makes the object ofits possession or desire the completest under the sun or above it. In that faith his spot became Paradise to him, and he beheld scenes which, to the ordinary eye, are but dim and unimpressive, but to minds at one with nature of divine effect, as when he saw from Great Gable the Isle of Man "rising out of a sea of light;" and in the late and early seasons" sights beyond the reach of human colouring-such work as nature herself makes with travelling clouds, and columns of misty sunshine, falling as from an eye of light in heaven." Let us now proceed to the greatest proof we can have of attachment to person or place-the perfect love that suffers no change, but continues stedfastly to the end. This we find characteristic of true lake devotees. Wordsworth marked out his resting-place, circled by his early-loved familiar hills. Arnold expressed his wish to lie "beneath the yews of Grasmere churchyard, with the Rotha, with its deep and silent pools passing by." And this last and deepest spell was wrought upon Southey by the mountains, vales, woods, waters, and their intense heavers. He ponders upon the final and complete rest, and would desire here to remain until the foundations of the mountains fail. In this mood, when the eternal broods over the soul, the peace and sweetness of the near churchyard draws him as much as have the sights of the morning and noon and night. He writes, in his thirty second year (so soon does the mind awaken to the vanity and uncertainty of earthly things) that the churchyard of Crosthwaite "is as open to the eye and to the breath of heaven, as if it were a Druids' place of meeting. There I shall take up my last abode. A man whose habitual frame of mind leads him to look forward, is none the worse for treading the churchyard path, with a belief that along that very path his hearse is one day to convey him." Our argument is now complete. The sunny Spain has had to give way to the potencies of our Lake land. But they have exceeded this. Wordsworth contended with scientific precision |