Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, page 142

Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787



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	Page 142:- "[lim]pid water of the Lake they so beautifully skirt; there waving in glorious slopes of cultivated inclosures, adorned in the sweetest manner with every object that variety to art, or elegance to nature, trees, woods, villages, houses, farms scattered with picturesque confusion, and waving to the eye in the most romantic landscapes that nature can exhibit. "This valley, so beautifully inclosed, is floated by the Lake, which spreads forth to the right and left, in one vast, but irregular expanse of transparent water: its immediate shore is traced in every variety of line that fancy can imagine; sometime contracting the Lake into the appearance of a noble, winding river; at others, retiring from it, and opening into large bays, as if for navies to anchor in: promontories spread with woods, or scattered with trees and inclosures, projecting into the water in the most picturesque stile imaginable; rocky points breaking the shore, and rearing their bold heads above the water: in a word, a variety that amazes the beholder. But what finishes the scene with an elegance too delicious to be imagined, is, this beautiful sheet of water being dotted with no less than ten islands, distinctly comprehended by the eye; all of the most bewitching beauty. The large one presents a waving various line, which rises from the water in the most picturesque inequalities of surface; high land in one place, low in another; clumps of trees in this spot, scattered ones in that; adorned by a farm-house on the water's edge, and backed with a little wood, vying in simple elegance with Baromean palaces: some of the small isles rising from the Lake, like little hills of wood; some only scattered with trees, and others of grass of the finest verdure: a more beautiful variety is no where to be seen. "Strain your imagination to command the idea of so noble an expanse of water, thus gloriously environed, spotted with islands more beautiful than would have issued from the happiest painter. Picture the mountains rearing their majestic heads with native sublimity; the vast rocks boldly projecting their terrible craggy points; and in the path of beauty, the variegated inclosures of the most charming verdure hanging to the eye in every picturesque form that can grace landscape, with the most exquisite touches of la belle nature. If you raise your fancy to something in infinitely beyond this assemblage of rural elegancies, you may have a faint notion of the unexampled beauties of this ravishing landscape." This extract may likewise shew us what stile has been adopted by our modern authors, and called by them, Bold, Picturesque, and Figurative: I shall only remark in it, that the loads of epithets here introduced are generally useless, and often tautological; that the easy unaffected stile of Mr Gray is at once both more pleasing and more intelligible, and that whoever would wish his readers to comprehend his subject, ought by no means to perplex them with obscurity of diction.
Slape Scar, Claife
	There is, a place called Slape-Cragg, (see plate X.) a much better view than that which Mr Young has so pompously described; every object which he mentions is there seen with greater distinctness, on account of the smaller distance, and in an evening the effects of light and shade are wonderful. We stand upon an eminence raised about 20 yards above the surface of the Lake, and have the most distinct and beautiful view of all the islands; Mr Christian's house, the sloping village of Bowness, Rayrigg, the front of the chapel underMiller-ground, Cawgarth, and many other places too tedious to enumerate; the most beautiful part of the view, (as I once saw it,) is seen when the sun is just setting; the mountain behind me obscured half the Lake in a dark shade; the other half distinctly reflected every object in the most lively colours; whilst the fields and trees on the opposite side, illuminated, not only with the direct rays of the sun, but with the light reflected from the Lake, exhibited such a profusion of the richest, golden tints as I never saw before. It happens, fortunately enough for travellers, that if they dine at Bowness, and then observe the views near it, they will reach Slape-Cragg about the proper time for viewing this beautiful scene.
	As

	gazetteer links
	-- (station, Orrest Head (CL13inc)2)
	-- (station, Slape Scar)


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