At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along
the eastern shore of Windermere. The superb scenery through which we had
been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we
should have thought it more than commonly interesting. Hawkshead is the
only village on our road,--a small, whitewashed old town, with a
whitewashed old Norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same
pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts. It was between seven
and eight o'clock when we reached Newby Bridge, and heard U----'s voice
greeting us, and saw her head, crowned with a wreath of flowers, looking
down at us, out of the window of our parlor.
And to-day, July 23d, I have written this most incomplete and
unsatisfactory record of what we have done and seen since Wednesday last.
I am pretty well convinced that all attempts at describing scenery,
especially mountain scenery, are sheer nonsense. For one thing, the
point of view being changed, the whole description, which you made up
from the previous point of view, is immediately falsified. And when you
have done your utmost, such items as those setting forth the scene in a
play,--"a mountainous country, in the distance a cascade tumbling over a
precipice, and in front a lake; on one side an ivy-covered cottage,"--
this dry detail brings the matter before one's mind's eyes more
effectually than all the art of word-painting.
July 27th.
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