London, and passed much time with us: he is now
gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we have
seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where
the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of
Ulswater; I forget the name; 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 and
brilliant!—O Manning, if I should have formed
a diabolical resolution, by the time you come to England,
of not admitting any spirituous liquors into my house,
will you be my guest on such shame-worthy terms?
Is life, with such limitations, worth trying?
The truth is, that my liquors bring a nest of friendly
harpies about my house, who consume me. This
is a pitiful tale to be read at St. Gothard, but it