Knoll, the pretty little villa in which Miss Martineau spent the long tranquil autumn of her life. She built it for herself, and was commended for the wisdom of her choice by Wordsworth, who did not break into any poetic raptures over the lovely scenery; but taking a commonplace view of the case, said shrewdly: 'You have made a capital investment; it will double its value in ten years.' He also gave her a piece of advice about her housekeeping, which had more of calculating frugality in it than a superficial observer would have expected from the poetic temperament. 'You will have many visitors,' quoth the prudent bard of Lakeland. 'You must do as we do. You must say to them: "If you will have some tea with us, you are welcome; but if you want any meat along with it, you must pay for it as boarders do."'

Rydal Mount, Wordsworth's home, is in the close vicinity of Ambleside, a sanctuary which Mr Payn would have closed against all pilgrims except those who can understand Wordsworth's works as well as quote them—a too severe ordeal, which would well nigh make a solitude of this classic spot. 'This intellectual winnowing-machine,' he says, 'would exclude about ninety out of a hundred of the well-meaning but really inexcusable folks who now request admittance at that sacred gate.'

Opposite the principal hotel at Grasmere, upon the roadside that leads to the Wishing Gate, is the white cottage in which Wordsworth spent his early married life, and where De Quincey lived after him, and filled the little drawing-room with his library of five thousand books. Here, invigorated by the mountain breezes, or absorbed in his books and the beautiful scenery, the far-famed Opium-eater made a sudden descent from three hundred and twenty grains (eight thousand drops) per diem of his favourite drug to forty grains, and found himself, Mr Payn says, in the novel position of a man with opium to give away.

One day when he was lounging among the June roses, a tawny stranger beturbaned and travel-stained asked an alms of him in the Malay tongue. Of this half-barbarous vernacular De Quincey was profoundly ignorant, as indeed he was of all Eastern languages, the only two Asiatic words he knew being the Arabic word for barley, and the Turkish name for opium. So he tried the dusky suppliant with Greek, which he replied to glibly in Malay. The end of the strange colloquy being that De Quincey, divining from the stranger's aspect that he also was an opium-eater, bestowed upon him a large cake of the precious drug; enough, he calculated, to serve him a fortnight. The Malay took it, and without more ado, swallowed it outright, leaving his benefactor transfixed with horror, staring dumbly after him as he went upon his way.

For some days afterwards De Quincey was not unnaturally much exercised in mind, and very curious to learn from all passers-by if a man with a turban had been found dead on the road between Grasmere and Whitehaven. He was not; but he might as well have been, as far as De Quincey was concerned; for no shade returning from the ghostly shores of Avernus to haunt a living foe ever exacted a more terrible vengeance for unintentional wrong than did the Grasmere Malay. For months he haunted with persistent animus the opium dreams of De Quincey, and was not exorcised until he had run the gantlet of every unimaginable horror, far transcending any atrocity of which a Malay in the flesh could have been capable.

As a matter of course, in Lakeland there is, for those who like it, climbing enough and to spare; but there are not a few sagacious individuals who have no relish for this exercise, and are ready to exclaim with Mr Payn: 'Of what use are photographs if they do not convey so accurate an idea of the locality as to save us the trouble and exertion of conveying ourselves thither! For what is the effect of the barbarism of walking uphill until the human frame becomes somewhat inured to it, just as it becomes inured to taking arsenic or any other deleterious habit? Why, a trembling of the legs, excessive pain in the knee-joints, determination of blood to the head, singing in the ears, inordinate perspiration, and a desperate desire for liquids.' Let all holiday wanderers, not being members of the Alpine Club, take note of this. Leaving climbing to those adventurous spirits who love it, there is no lack of beautiful walks for more humble-minded pedestrians, only they must beware not of the dog, but of the bull. These formidable quadrupeds abound or did abound; and to find yourself face to face in a bowery glade with a huge bellowing brute, pawing the ground, distending his nostrils, glaring at you with his fierce red eyes, and otherwise unnecessarily exciting himself, is, to say the least, a situation in which it would be very difficult even for a Sir Charles Grandison to preserve an equable dignity of demeanour.

At Coniston you can, if a member of the Alpine Club, or qualifying for that honour, do the Old Man of Coniston; 'but to recommend the ascent of such a monster is altogether,' Mr Payn says, 'contrary to his principles.' He rather recommends the ascent of Black Coomb, a sombre but majestic hill, from which, said Wordsworth, 'there is the most extensive sea-view in Britain.'

Perhaps, however, O weary tourist, your head may not be of the steadiest at giddy heights, and it may be as well to pause in lowly but safe obscurity at its base, and there solace yourself with a description of its glories:

Opposite Wallabarrow Crag is the hamlet of Newfield, where lived in days gone by a worthy clergyman, who was known far and near throughout the little world of the Dales by the name of Wonderful Walker. In a worldly sense, less blest than he of whom the poet sings, 'that he was passing rich with forty pounds a year,' for he had but eighteen, he yet with the help of this slender income maintained and educated a family of twelve, and died at the age of ninety worth two thousand pounds! This of course was not all saved out of the eighteen pounds a year. He acted as doctor, schoolmaster, and lawyer for his parishioners, and lent a hand besides at sheep-shearing and hay-harvest; for all which diverse services he exacted and obtained a modest fee.

Furness Abbey, with its vast piles of splendid ruins, with its lonely aisles, and roofless dormitories deserted and time-stricken, appeals to the gazer with a sense of beauty so full and exquisite in its calm decay, that content with the loveliness that remains, he scarcely cares to recall the glories that have gone by. Dire have been the alternations of fate through which this magnificent house of Our Lady of Furness has passed. In the spacious building which is now used as the railway hotel, Rogerus Pele, the last abbot, held his state. Here he was so unwise as to countenance a local rising against Henry VIII.; and here, when that Defender of the Faith had triumphed over all his enemies, he received from the ecclesiastical commission a list of questions, one or two of which bothered him not a little. Had not he, vowed as he was to the stern Cistercian rule, two wives? Had not one of his monks one, and another five?—an excess of blessing which Henry perhaps wisely thought ought to be included in the special rights of kings only. How did Abbot Rogerus answer these questions? Did St Bernard aid in his hour of need this