While speaking of Elleray, we should pay a passing tribute of gratitude to an older worthy of that neighborhood,—­the well-known Bishop of Llandaff, Richard Watson, who did more for the beauty of Windermere than any other person.  There is nothing to praise in the damp old mansion at Calgarth, set down in low ground, and actually with its back to the lake, and its front windows commanding no view; but the woods are the glory of Bishop Watson.  He was not a happy prelate, believing himself undervalued and neglected, and fretting his heart over his want of promotion; but be must have had many a blessed hour while planting those woods for which many generations will be grateful to him.  Let the traveller remember him, when looking abroad from Miller Brow, near Bowness.  Below lies the whole length of Windermere, from the white houses of Clappersgate, nestling under Loughrigg at the head, to the Beacon at the foot.  The whole range of both shores, with their bays and coves and promontories, can be traced; and the green islands are clustered in the centre; and the whole gradation of edifices is seen, from Wray Castle, on its rising ground, to the tiny boat-houses, each on its creek.  All these features are enhanced in beauty by the Calgarth woods, which cover the undulations of hill and margin beneath and around, rising and falling, spreading and contracting, with green meadows interposed, down to the white pebbly strand.  To my eye, this view is unsurpassed by any in the District.

Bishop Watson’s two daughters were living in the neighborhood till two years ago,—­antique spinsters, presenting us with a most vivid specimen of the literary female life of the last century.  They were excellent women, differing from the rest of society chiefly in their notion that superior people should show their superiority in all the acts of their lives,—­that literary people should talk literature, and scientific people science, and so on; and they felt affronted, as if set down among common people, when an author talked about common things in a common way.  They did their best to treat their friends to wit and polite letters; and they expected to be ministered to in the same fashion.  This was rather embarrassing to visitors to whom it had never occurred to talk for any other purpose than to say what presented itself at the moment; but it is a privilege to have known those faithful sisters, and to have seen in them a good specimen of the literary society of the last century.

There is another spot in that neighborhood which strangers look up to with interest from the lake itself,—­Dovenest, the abode of Mrs. Hemans for the short time of her residence at the Lakes.  She saw it for the first time from the lake, as her published correspondence tells, and fell in love with it; and as it was vacant at the time, she went into it at once.  Many of my readers will remember her description of the garden and the view from it, the terrace, the circular grass-plot