bosom; rocky and barren steeps rise up above the hanging enclosures; and the solemn Pikes of Langdale overlook, from a distance, the low cultivated ridge of land that forms the northern boundary of this small, quiet, and fertile domain.  The mountain Tarns can only be recommended to the notice of the inquisitive traveller who has time to spare.  They are difficult of access and naked; yet some of them are, in their permanent forms, very grand; and there are accidents of things which would make the meanest of them interesting.  At all events, one of these pools is an acceptable sight to the mountain wanderer; not merely as an incident that diversifies the prospect, but as forming in his mind a centre or conspicuous point to which objects, otherwise disconnected or insubordinated, may be referred.  Some few have a varied outline, with bold heath-clad promontories; and, as they mostly lie at the foot of a steep precipice, the water, where the sun is not shining upon it, appears black and sullen; and, round the margin, huge stones and masses of rock are scattered; some defying conjecture as to the means by which they came thither; and others obviously fallen from on high—­the contribution of ages!  A not unpleasing sadness is induced by this perplexity, and these images of decay; while the prospect of a body of pure water unattended with groves and other cheerful rural images, by which fresh water is usually accompanied, and unable to give furtherance to the meagre vegetation around it—­excites a sense of some repulsive power strongly put forth, and thus deepens the melancholy natural to such scenes.  Nor is the feeling of solitude often more forcibly or more solemnly impressed than by the side of one of these mountain pools:  though desolate and forbidding, it seems a distinct place to repair to; yet where the visitants must be rare, and there can be no disturbance.  Water-fowl flock hither; and the lonely angler may here be seen; but the imagination, not content with this scanty allowance of society, is tempted to attribute a voluntary power to every change which takes place in such a spot, whether it be the breeze that wanders over the surface of the water, or the splendid lights of evening resting upon it in the midst of awful precipices.

    There, sometimes does a leaping fish
    Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
    The crags repeat the raven’s croak
    In symphony austere: 
    Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud,
    And mists that spread the flying shroud,
    And sunbeams, and the sounding blast.

It will be observed that this country is bounded on the south and east by the sea, which combines beautifully, from many elevated points, with the inland scenery; and, from the bay of Morecamb, the sloping shores and back-ground of distant mountains are seen, composing pictures equally distinguished for amenity and grandeur.  But the aestuaries on this coast are in a great measure bare at low water[52]; and there is no instance of