He surely is an arrant ass
  Who pays to ride up Kirkstone Pass,
  For he will find, in spite of talking,
  He’ll have to walk and pay for walking.

Three parts of Windermere is in Lancashire, and it is the largest and perhaps the deepest water in the Lake District, being ten and a half miles long by water, and thirteen miles by road along its shores; the water is at no point more than two miles broad.  It is said to maintain the same level at the upper end whether it rains or not, and is so clear that in some places the fish can plainly be seen swimming far beneath its surface.  The islands are clustered together at its narrowest part, by far the largest being Belle Isle, a finely wooded island with a mansion in the centre, and a noted stronghold of the Royalists during the Civil War, at which time it was in the possession of the ancient Westmorland family of Phillipson.  We did not walk alongside Windermere, but passed by the head of the lake to the old-world village of Hawkshead, and called at the quaint old-fashioned inn known by the familiar sign of the “Red Lion.”  While tea was being prepared we surveyed the village, and on a stone in the churchyard we found the following epitaph: 

  This stone can boast as good a wife
  As ever lived a married life,
  And from her marriage to her grave
  She was never known to mis-behave. 
  The tongue which others seldom guide,
  Was never heard to blame or chide;
  From every folly always free
  She was what others ought to be.

[Illustration:  HAWKSHEAD SQUARE AND INN.]

We had a long talk with the mistress of the inn, who told us that Wordsworth was educated at the Grammar School in the village, and we were surprised to hear from her that the Rev. Richard Greenall, whom we had often heard officiate when he was curate of our native village of Grappenhall, was now the vicar of Hawkshead.  We had quite as exalted an opinion of him as the gentleman we met at Ambleside had of his vicar.  He was a clergyman who not only read the prayers, but prayed them at the same time: 

  I often say my prayers,
  But do I ever pray?

and it was a pleasure to listen to the modulations of his voice as he recited the Lord’s Prayer, and especially when repeating that fine supplication to the Almighty, beginning with the words “Almighty and most merciful Father.”  At that time it was not the custom to recite, read, or sing the prayers in one continual whine on one note (say G sharp) when offering up supplications to the Almighty—­a note which if adopted by a boy at school would have ensured for him a severe caning, or by a beggar at your door a hasty and forcible departure.  Nor were the Lessons read in a monotone, which destroys all sense of their full meaning being imparted to the listeners—­but this was in the “good old times”!

[Illustration:  CONISTON.]