[Illustration:  WORDSWORTH’S GRAVE.]

An item in the Church Book at Grasmere, dating from the seventeenth century, recorded the cost of “Ye ale bestowed on ye Rush Bearers,” while in 1830 gingerbread appeared to have been substituted or added as a luxury to “ye ale.”

We passed alongside the pretty lakes of Grasmere and Rydal Water amid beautiful scenery.  Mrs. Hemans, in her sonnet, “A remembrance of Grasmere,” wrote: 

  O vale and lake, within your mountain urn,
  Smiling so tranquilly, and set so deep! 
  Oft doth your dreamy loveliness return. 
  Colouring the tender shadows of my sleep. 
  Your shores in melting lustre, seem to float
  On golden clouds from spirit-lands, remote
  Isles of the blest:—­and in our memory keep
  Their place with holiest harmonies.  Fair scene
  Most loved by Evening and her dewy star! 
  Oh! ne’er may man, with touch unhallow’d, jar
  The perfect music of the charm serene: 
  Still, still unchanged, may one sweet region wear
  Smiles that subdue the soul to love, and tears, and prayer!

On our way to Ambleside we passed Rydal Mount, Wordsworth’s residence until his death in 1850 in the eightieth year of his age.  Mrs. Hemans has described it as “a lovely cottage-like building, almost hidden by a profusion of roses and ivy.”  Ambleside was a great centre for tourists and others, being situated at the head of the fine Lake of Windermere, to which its admirers were ambitious enough to apply Sir Walter Scott’s lines on Loch Katrine: 

  In all her length far winding lay
  With promontory, creek, and bay,
  And islands that impurpled bright
  Floated amid the livelier light. 
  And mountains that like Giants stand
  To sentinel enchanted land.

There was a Roman camp which we proposed visiting, and possibly Helvellyn, but we were compelled for a time to seek refuge in one of the hotels from the rain.  There we met a gentleman, a resident in the locality, who was what we might describe as a religious enthusiast, for he had a very exalted opinion of the Vicar of Ambleside, whom he described as a “Christian man”—­a term obviously making distinctions among vicars with which we heartily agreed.  There must have been an atmosphere of poetry in the Lake District affecting both visitors and natives, for in a small valley, half a mile from a lonely chapel, stood the only inn, bearing the strange sign of “The Mortal Man” on which some native poet, but not Wordsworth, had written: 

  O Mortal Man, who liv’st on bread,
  What is’t that makes thy nose so red?—­
  Thou silly ass, that looks so pale. 
  It is with drinking Burkett’s ale.

[Illustration:  THE OLD MILL AT AMBLESIDE.]

Immediately behind Ambleside there was a fearfully steep road leading up to the head of Kirkstone Pass, where at an altitude of quite 1,400 feet stood the “Travellers’ Rest Inn.”  In our time walking was the only means of crossing the pass, but now visitors are conveyed up this hill in coaches, but as the gradient is so steep in some parts, they are invariably asked to walk, so as to relieve the horses a little, a fact which found expression in the Visitors’ Book at the “Travellers’ Rest” in the following lines: