’You will have wondered, dear Lady Frederick, what is become of me.  I have been wandering about the country, and only returned yesterday.  Our tour was by Keswick, Scale Hill, Buttermere, Loweswater, Ennerdale, Calder Abbey, Wastdale, Eskdale, the Vale of Duddon, Broughton, Furness Abbey, Peele Castle, Ulverston, &c.; we had broken weather, which kept us long upon the road, but we had also very fine intervals, and I often wished you had been present.  We had such glorious sights! one, in particular, I never saw the like of.  About sunset we were directly opposite that large, lofty precipice at Wastwater, which is called the Screes.  The ridge of it is broken into sundry points, and along them, and partly along the side of the steep, went driving a procession of yellow vapoury clouds from the sea-quarter towards the mountain Scawfell.  Their colours I have called yellow, but it was exquisitely varied, and the shapes of the rocks on the summit of the ridge varied with the density or thinness of the vapours.  The effect was most enchanting; for right above was steadfastly fixed a beautiful rainbow.  We were a party of seven, Mrs. Wordsworth, my daughter, and Miss Fenwick included, and it would be difficult to say who was most delighted.  The Abbey of Furness, as you well know, is a noble ruin, and most happily situated in a dell that entirely hides it from the surrounding country.  It is taken excellent care of, and seems little dilapidated since I first knew it, more than half a century ago.][1]

[1] Memoirs, ii. 97-8.

320. The Wild Strawberry:  Sympson. [Sonnet VI. ll. 9-10.]

    ’There bloomed the strawberry of the wilderness,
    The trembling eyebright showed her sapphire blue.’

These two lines are in a great measure taken from ’The Beauties of Spring, a Juvenile Poem,’ by the Rev. Joseph Sympson.  He was a native of Cumberland, and was educated in the vale of Grasmere, and at Hawkshead school:  his poems are little known, but they contain passages of splendid description; and the versification of his ‘Vision of Alfred’ is harmonious and animated.  In describing the motions of the Sylphs, that constitute the strange machinery of his Poem, he uses the following illustrative simile: 

    —­’Glancing from their plumes
    A changeful light the azure vault illumes. 
    Less varying hues beneath the Pole adorn
    The streamy glories of the Boreal morn,
    That wavering to and fro their radiance shed
    On Bothnia’s gulf with glassy ice o’erspread,
    Where the lone native, as he homeward glides,
    On polished sandals o’er the imprisoned tides,
    And still the balance of his frame preserves,
    Wheeled on alternate foot in lengthening curves,
    Sees at a glance, above him and below,
    Two rival heavens with equal splendour glow. 
    Sphered in the centre of the world he seems;
    For all around with soft effulgence gleams;
    Stars, moons, and meteors, ray opposed to ray,
    And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day.’