The Old Man; or, Ravings and Ramblings round Conistone — Part 27

But it is time you were taking leave of Cockley Beck, and as you are doing so, you may perceive at the foot of the heights to your left a number of rubbish heaps, the result of a mining speculation set a going and kept up by some spirited and very persevering gentlemen chiefly resident in Ulverstone. You now canter along a decent road through flat meadows where, if it be the season, the lads and lasses of the dale are busily engaged in securing the hay-crop and carrying it home, probably on horseback, for the old farmers here have not as yet begun to use carts for that purpose. On this road, too, there are “oceans of gates” to open, the frequent recurrence of which becomes rather troublesome, should your pony not be all the steadier. You very soon arrive at another farm, called Dalehead; but, by the bye, just before you reach that, you had better turn off to the right by a track that soon brings you to the river side, and take a look at the stepping stones by which the Duddon is crossed at this point. When you have looked at them, you seem to wonder what it may be that should entitle them to be noticed more than any other stepping stones in the country. I'll tell you. Mr Wordsworth says they are—

“What might seem a zone Chosen for ornament—stone matched with stone In studied symmetry, with interspace For the clear waters to pursue their race Without restraint,”

and so on. It certainly does require a poet’s eye to discover the title of these stones to be made the subject of two whole sonnets of fourteen lines apiece; and apropos to that, I once, at an evening party near Hawkshead, overheard a gentleman ask another, “Have you read Wordsworth’s sonnets on the Duddon?” “No.” “O then,” said the first, “if you ever do read them, don’t believe them! We were there last week, and we didn’t find anything as he has described it.” Now though this advice is entitled to some respect, inasmuch as the giver is an amateur painter and musician of high excellence and also a very keen angler, which last a respected friend of mine would call the most intellectual and poetical pursuit of the three, I cannot _quite_ coincide with it, and I shall soon make _you_ admit that, although the vale of Seathwaite may not be all that the Laureate, in the customary exercise of poetic licence, may seem to make it, yet is it well worthy a visit from any one with the smallest pretensions to a taste for the picturesque.