button to main menu  Clarke's Survey of the Lakes, 1787

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Page viii:-
[condi]tion. From any one of these considerations we look for many vestiges of elder times, but when all are combined in a particular district, it is natural to infer that such a district will contain many relics of antiquity.
  painting
  poetry

VII. The painter's researches for views, which by a sort of irregular symmetry may affect the imagination strongly, or may please the eye by richness of tints or variety of shades, are generally gratified where the ruder boldness of mountains is contrasted with the rich foliage of trees, or with sheets or streams of water: or where clouds and vapours intersperse varieties of aerial scenery, that change as it were by magic, impressing on the objects within their effect a hue and cast of appearance that scarce seems earthly. He chuses his stations where these may not only meet at once, but in such an arrangement as may strike the mind powerfully, and leave their impression and image upon the memory. Where painting goes, there generally goes poetry; their walks are the same; their beloved scenes are similar, and have always been so from the Grecian temple, to the green glens of Britain.
  weather
VIII. Wherever there are mountains, there are certain changes of weather, quite dissimilar to those which are experienced in leveller places; nay, there are diversities of climate in places equally mountainous, arising from the different directions of their hills, or the position of them with respect to one another; for by the intervention of hills, winds may be diverted from their original course, and part of them so diverted as to cross and interrupt each other; or they may be precipitated from the summits; or, again, in some cases generated by a mere agglomeration of clouds or mists. Now, it is well known what a material effect winds have upon the weather, or rather how intimately they are connected with it: and wherever the observers of the seasons find their prognostics changed from those of the low lands, where they are most commonly made, (because there they can be made with more certainty, and earlier with respect to their consequences,) there must be an amazing tract for natural philosophy to walk in, and examine the causes: yet this it may do with more ease in a hilly country, than a level one; because amongst hills the effects more immediately follow the cause, and both may be observed almost at once. In either case, it may perhaps divert a classic reader to compare the modern rustic method of foretelling weather, with that of Hesiod and Virgil.
It will easily be seen, that the proceeding paragraphs have no regular plan in themselves, nor dependence upon each other: they are indeed only so many distinct themes on which I mean to comment, without observing any order, or having any other reference but what regards the plans. However, as they are very diffuse in their nature, it may not be amiss to subjoin a general application of each, and shew in what manner they concern the business which I have undertaken.
I. With respect to the first, I cannot begin this subject better than with an observation of Sir Walter Raleigh's. Speaking of that passage in Herodotus, wherein he ascribes the great wars between the Persians and Greeks to the vanity of Atossa the Persian Queen, who being desirous of having some Grecian bondwomen, teized her husband till he began that terrible contest; Sir Walter says, "This I may boldly affirm, (having, I think, in every estate some sufficient witness,) that matters of much consequence, founded, in all seeming, upon substantial reasons, have issued indeed from such petty trifles, as no historian would either think upon, or could well search out." To this sentiment I so entirely accede, as to believe, that more than half of the great affairs of this world might, had we but the proper clue, be traced to some insignificancy or other as their origin: for if we say that trifles affect the minds of men in the most eminent stations, we may instance the proffer of assistance made by the Grand Signior to Henry IV. of France, merely because the former hated the word [League]. What dreadful havoc was occasioned in England by a casual amour, and subsequent marriage of Edward IV. Affairs purely domestic made Henry VIII. shake off the Pope's supremacy; and a ludicrous present of a few tennis-balls is said not a little to have exasperated that
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