The descent is alike rough and steep, bringing you rapidly down to the first farm. A cliff on the right gradually merges into the rounded swell of a green hill; we come to a plantation where, in the open places by the beck, grow wild strawberries; then to trees on one side--ash, holly, beech, and larch, the stems embraced by ivy, and thorns and wild roses between; then trees on both sides, and the narrow track is beautiful as a Berkshire lane--and that is saying a great deal--and the brook which accompanies it makes a cheerful sound as if gladdened by the quivering sunbeams that fall upon it. Everywhere the haymakers are at work, and with merry hearts, for the wind blows lustily and makes the whole dale vocal.
By-and-by the lane sends off branches, all alike pretty, one of which brings us down into the lowest meadows, and on the descent we get glimpses of Bolton Castle, and on the right appears Penhill, shouldering forward like a great promontory. A relic of antiquity may yet be seen on its slopes--obscure remains of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars. The watcher on Penhill was one of those who helped to spread the alarm of invasion in the days of Napoleon the Great, for he mistook a fire on the eastern hills for the beacon on Rosebury Topping, and so set his own a-blaze. We come to Thoralby, a village of comfortable signs within, and pleasant prospects without; and now Wensleydale opens, and another half-hour brings us to Aysgarth, a large village four miles below Bainbridge.
A tall maypole stands on the green, the only one I remember to have seen in Yorkshire. It is a memorial of the sports and pastimes for which Wensleydale was famous. The annual feasts and fairs would attract visitors from twenty miles around. Here, at Aysgarth, not the least popular part of the amusements were the races, run by men stark naked, as people not more than forty years old can well remember. But times are changed; and throughout the dale drunkenness and revelry are giving way to teetotalism, lectures, tea-gatherings, and other moral recreations. And the change is noticeable in another particular: the Quakers, who were once numerous in the dale, have disappeared too.
Some two or three years ago a notion prevailed in a certain quarter that the time was ripe for making proselytes, and establishing a meeting once more at Aysgarth. The old meeting-house, the school-room, and dwelling-house, remained; why should they not be restored to their original uses? Was it not "about Wensleydale" that George Fox saw "a great people in white raiment by a river-side?" Did he not, while on his journey up the dale, go into the "steeple-house" and "largely and freely declare the word of life, and have not much persecution," and afterwards was locked into a parlour as "a young man that was mad, and had run away from his relations?" From certain indications it seemed that a successful effort might be made; an earnest and active member of the society volunteered to remove with his family from London into Yorkshire to carry out the experiment; and soon the buildings were repaired, the garden was cultivated anew, the doors of the meeting-house were opened; the apostle went about and talked to the people, and gave away tracts freely. The people listened to him, and read his tracts, and were well content to have him among them; but the experiment failed--not one became a Quaker.