Passing through Ambleside, our phaeton and pair turned towards Ullswater,
which we were to reach through the Pass of Kirkstone. This is some three
or four miles from Ambleside, and as we approached it the road kept
ascending higher and higher, the hills grew more bare, and the country
lost its soft and delightful verdure. At last the road became so steep
that J----- and I alighted to walk. This is the aspiring road that
Wordsworth speaks of in his ode; it passes through the gorge of
precipitous hills,--or almost precipitous,--too much so for even the
grass to grow on many portions, which are covered with gray smugly
stones; and I think this pass, in its middle part, must have looked just
the same when the Romans marched through it as it looks now. No trees
could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the English
climate can generate no available soil. I do not know that I have seen
anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked
mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. The notch of
the White Mountains, as I remember it in my youthful days, is more
wonderful and richly picturesque, but of quite a different character.
About the centre and at the highest point of the pass stands an old stone
building of mean appearance, with the usual sign of an alehouse,
"Licensed to retail foreign spirits, ale, and tobacco," over the door,
and another small sign, designating it as the highest inhabitable house
in England.
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