Coleridge had got a blazing fire
in his study, which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an
old-fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a church, shelves
of scattered folios, an AEolian harp, and an old sofa, half-bed, etc.;
and all looking out upon the last fading view of Skiddaw and his
broad-breasted brethren. What a night! Here we stayed three full weeks,
in which time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a day or
two with the Clarksons (good people and most hospitable, at whose house
we tarried one day and night), and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone
to Calais. They have since been in London, and passed much time with us;
he has now gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we have seen Keswick,
Grasmere, Ambleside, Ulswater (where the Clarksons live), and a place at
the other end of Ulswater,--I forget the name, [1]--to which we travelled
on a very sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clambered up
to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the bed of Lodore. In fine, I
have satisfied myself that there is such a thing as that which tourists
call _romantic_, which I very much suspected before; they make such a
spluttering about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, till
they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morning the lamps do
after an illumination. Mary was excessively tired when she got about
half way up Skiddaw; but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can
be imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with the
reinforcement of a draught of cold water she surmounted it most
manfully.
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