The scenery in the neighbourhood of Keswick is replete with beauty, and the numerous walks and rides possess brilliant attractions.  Villas and prettily-built cottages add grace and quietness to the landscape.  Gray, on leaving Keswick, was so charmed with the wonders which surrounded him, that he felt great reluctance in quitting the spot, and said, “that he had almost a mind to go back again.”  From the eminence near Keswick on which the Druidical circle stands a magnificent view is obtained of Derwentwater, Latrigg, Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Dunmail Raise, with the vale of St. John and the Borrowdale mountains.

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Buttermere stands near the foot of the lake, and by Seatoller is fourteen miles from Keswick.  Taking the vale of Newlands by the way, the distance is much less.  In the vicinity of Seatoller is the celebrated mine of plumbago, or black lead.  “It has been worked at intervals for upwards of two centuries; but, being now less productive, the ore has been excavated for several years consecutively.  This is the only mine of the kind in England, and there are one or two places in Scotland where plumbago has been discovered, but the lead obtained there is of an inferior quality.  The best ore produced at the Borrowdale mine sells for thirty shillings a pound.  All the ore extracted from the mine is sent direct to London before a particle is sold.”  Buttermere is a mere hamlet, comprising a small episcopal chapel, only a few farm-houses, with the Victoria and another inn for the accommodation of visitors.  De Quincy, who has long been a resident of the Lake District, and a fervent admirer of its many beauties, describes this secluded spot as follows:—­“The margin of the lake, which is overhung by some of the loftiest and steepest of the Cumbrian mountains, exhibits on either side few traces of human neighbourhood; the level area, where the hills recede enough to allow of any, is of a wild, pastoral character, or almost savage.  The waters of the lake are deep and sullen, and the barren mountains, by excluding the sun in much of his daily course, strengthen the gloomy impressions.  At the foot of this lake lie a few unornamented fields, through which rolls a little brook, connecting it with the larger lake of Crummock, and at the edge of this miniature domain, upon the road-side, stands a cluster of cottages, so small and few, that in the richer tracts of the island they would scarcely be complimented with the name of hamlet.”  The well-known story of Mary, the Beauty of Buttermere, with the beautiful poem describing her woes, entitled, “Mary, the Maid of the Inn,” has given to the village a more than common interest.  As the melancholy tale is told, Mary possessed great personal beauty, and, being the daughter of the innkeeper, she fulfilled the duty of attendant upon visitors to the house.  Among these was a dashing young man who assumed the aristocratic title of the Honourable Colonel Hope,