button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

button title page
button previous page button next page
Page 238:-

ARTICLE VII.

Tour to the Caves
A TOUR TO THE CAVES IN THE WEST-RIDING OF YORKSHIRE,
In a letter to a Friend[1],
Of antres vast, and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose head touch'd heav'n,
It was my hint to speak.
Shakespeare's Othello, Act. 1.
SIR,- ACCORDING to promise, I sit down to give you an account of our summer excursion.- After having made the tour of the lakes, we were induced to proceed from Kendal by Kirkby-Lonsdale, Ingleton, Chapel-in-the-Dale, Horton, and Settle, in order to see the caves and other natural curiosities in Craven, in the West-Riding of Yorkshire. This second part of our tour was more entertaining to most of the party than the first, being peculiarly adapted to our taste for natural history, for the great and sublime. While some are pleased with the gay and beautiful, others are only to be roused and affected by the grand and terrible. The strong and nervous sensations require objects proper for their gratification, no less than the most nice and delicate tastes.- If elegant prospects and the refinements of art are suited to these, the rough, irregular, and stupendous works of nature, are no less adapted to the enjoyment of the former. Objects accommodated to the genius of a hardihood truly sublime, are only to be met with, in this island, among the wild and irregular mountains of the north, among the roaring cataracts that roll foaming down precipitate from their lofty summits, and the huge and dreary caverns or profound and yawning chasms they contain within their sides. It is here that Nature delights, as it were, to perform her magnificent works in secret, silently
[1] This footnote is missing in the text being transcribed, 11th edn 1821; from the 9th edn 1807, the footnote is:-.
This work, written by the Rev, John Hutton, B.D. Vicar of Burton, with the addition of some philosophical conjectures on the deluge, remarks on the origin of fountains, and observations on the ascent and descent of vapours, occasioned by facts peculiar to the places visited; also a glossary of old words used in the north of England; may be had of the publishers, price 1s. 6.

button next page

button to main menu Lakes Guides menu.