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Page 194:-
[circumfe]rence above twenty miles. Instead of a meagre rivulet,
a noble living lake, ten miles round, of an oblong form, adorned
with a variety of wooded islands. The rocks, indeed, of Dovedale
are finely wild, pointed, and irregular; but the hills are both
little and unanimated; and the margin of the brook is poorly
edged with weeds, morass, and brushwood. But at Keswick, you will
on one side of the lake, see a rich and beautiful landscape of
cultivated fields, rising to the eye, in fine inequalities, with
noble groves of oak, happily dispersed, and climbing the adjacent
hills, shade above shade, in the most various and picturesque
forms. On the opposite shore you will find rocks and cliffs of
stupendous height, hanging broken over the lake in horrible
grandeur, some of them a thousand feet high, the woods climbing
up their steep and shaggy sides, where mortal foot never yet
approached. On these dreadful heights, the eagles build their
nest; a variety of water-falls are seen pouring from their
summits, and tumbling in vast sheets from rock to rock, in rude
and terrible magnificence; while on all sides of this immense
amphitheatre, the lofty mountains rise around, piercing the
clouds, in shapes as spiry and fantastic as the very rocks of
Dovedale - To this I must add the frequent and bold projection of
the cliffs into the lake, forming noble bays and promontories: in
other parts they finely retire from it, and often open in abrupt
chasms or cliffs, through which at hand you see rich and
cultivated vales, and beyond these, at various distances,
mountain rising over mountain, among which, new prospects present
themselves in mist, till the eye is lost in agreeable
perplexity:-
Where active fancy travels beyond sense,
And pictures things unseen ---
Were I to analyse the two places into their constituent
principles, I should tell you, that the full perfection of
Keswick consists of three circumstances, beauty, horror, and
immensity united; the second of which is alone found in Dovedale.
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