The Old Man; or, Ravings and Ramblings round Conistone — Part 16

I was lately deluded into reading a book entitled, “Conistone Hall, or the Jacobites,” written by a dignitary of the English Church, “in order,” as he says, “to exhibit the tone of feeling and the disorders of Church and State, to which the ill-advised revolution of 1688 gave rise.” I was simple enough to hope to find matter of local interest in a book called “Conistone Hall,” but was grievously disappointed,—it might as well have been called “Lancaster Castle,”—and the subject-matter is quite worthy of the author’s object.

And now, having bored you, probably _ad nauseam_, about the Old Hall, it were well to return to your Inn; and, having allowed you what is requisite of rest and refreshment, I shall carry you off upon your longest excursion first; “and,” to quote The Professor thereanent, “if murmuring streams and dashing torrents, and silent pools, and shadow-haunted grass-fields, and star-studded meadows, and glimmering groves, and cliff-girdling coppice woods, and a hundred charcoal shellings, huts and cottages, and one Old Hall, and several hall-like barns, and a solitary chapel among its green graves, and glades, and dells, and glens without number, knolls, eminences, hillocks, hills, and mountains,—if these, and many other such sights as these, all so disposed that beauty breathes, whispers, moves, or hangs motionless over all, have power to charm your spirit,——away with the cavalcade into the heart of the expecting mountains.”

If, like myself, you prefer enjoying a long excursion upon four legs to enduring it upon two, your host can supply, at a satisfactory rate, ponies well accustomed to the roughest roads in the country. You declare for the equestrian mode of progression: well, say the word, and behold your steed at the door. Being safely and pleasantly mounted, you turn your pony’s tail to the lake, and canter up the road till you come to a group of ancient and picturesque cottages and farm-buildings, called High Waterhead (Conistone Water being bicipital), and then take the road to your left, which passes through amongst these houses, and by another old homestead called 'Boon (_vulgo_ above) Crag, holding on along an occupation road which winds through a considerable portion of Mr Marshall's wooded parks; and, as you jog along, keep a sharp eye to the left,—“ride, as the Spaniard hath it, with your beard on your shoulder,”—and your vigilance will be rewarded with occasional glimpses of the lake and its shores, broken up into a series of lovely fragmentary pictures by the irregular intervention of the scattered or “clumped” timber. You soon begin to descend into the middle of the vale of Yewdale, which Mr Parkinson, the accomplished canon of Manchester and Principal of St. Bees, maintains to be the most beautiful in the lake district, and which is described by Green, the artist, as being “a grand valley lying at the feet of the high mountains on the north of Conistone Water.” As you approach it, you must, if you have eyes and soul, be struck with “the steep, frowning glories” of the mile-long range of lofty cliffs which bound Yewdale on the whole extent of its western side, the otherwise barren aspect of which is finely relieved by thick groves, comprising oak, larch, birch, holly, &c., stretching along the foot of the crags, and also by numerous and various trees flourishing here and there along the face of the steep, in situations “the most inaccessible by shepherds trod,” even up to the highest verge of the precipice, where it makes one giddy to imagine how they have been planted, for they ore not of spontaneous growth, but were all planted by the late Mr Knott.