United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I could spend a year, two, three years among them; but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet Street at the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. My habits are changing, I think, i.e., from drunk to sober. Whether I shall be happier or not, remains to be proved.
The wind from the Skiddaw and Borrowdale was often as loud as wind need be, and many a walk in the clouds in the mountains did I take; but all would not do, till one day I dined out at the house of a neighbouring clergyman, and some how or other drank so much wine, that I found some effort and dexterity requisite to balance myself on the hither edge of sobriety.
And all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw, and his broad-breasted brethren: what a night! . . . We have clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore.
This ceremony was drawn out and complicated by the fact that it involved, on the part of the Duchess and Lady Skiddaw, definite farewells, and pledges of speedy reunion in Paris, where they were to pause and replenish their wardrobes on the way to England. The quality of Mrs.
Skiddaw was a pure snow mountain, a miniature Mont Blanc; Derwentwater was blue as polished steel, covered with ice so clear that it was everywhere transparent; the woods were plumed with snow, and over all shone the sun of June, and the keen air tingled in the veins like wine.
He assented, and we had a fine climb and a glorious view over the West Borderland; we could see Skiddaw and Helvellyn to the north-west, and even thought we saw Criffel looming in the haze beyond Solway; to the east the great hills beside Crossfell lifted their great rampire and gave a sense of security to the green vale below. Reinvigorated by our walk we returned in good heart to the inn.
Turf kicked in the stable as well as out of it, and hit a groom on the forehead a few days later. The man would probably have been killed without the leather of his cap. Finding an artist at Keswick, Mr. J. P. Pettitt, I asked his advice and became his pupil for a few days. I climbed Skiddaw during the night with one of Mr. Pettitt's sons, who was a geologist and a landscape-painter also.
Who would not fight when summoned by a tongue of flame? And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle. Roman candles were unknown to the Romans, but they enjoyed themselves with torches, and these were the fireworks at wedding fetes. The golden rain in which Jupiter wooed Danae was another sort of hymeneal fireworks. There were fireworks at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as long as we could at Blencathra, and Skiddaw over its shoulder, and the clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along the eastern shore of Windermere.
We went there from Annan; and as we flew along in the car over a good white road, we could see across widening waters the mountains of the English Lake country floating like a mirage along the southern sky, Skiddaw with its twin peaks higher and bluer than the rest. How I love the names of the Cumberland places and mountains!
Word Of The Day