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

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page xxxv:-
the ideas of improved society, nor will it permit the niceties of learning to grow upon the rudeness of antiquated superstition. Whilst it prevents study and refinement at home, it also repels the means of them from abroad; by threatening their teachers with the same, or, as was often the case, with greater perils. Such I apprehend is the principal cause of numerous vestiges of ancient manners to be found in the Borders. We have no doubt how late it was before any degree of civilization rose, and find on record under what difficulties, and at how modern a period, Christianity acquired an establishment there: for though it might be early known and preached on the Western Border, yet avarice and rapine in manner quenched it, nor had it a seminary or fixed seat from whence it could diffuse itself. Even after the pious bounty of the Royal Earl of Huntingdon had erected Holm-Cultram, and the murderous hospitality of the lord of Gillsland had given occasion to the building of Lanercost, we find that those very houses were levelled at times, or burned, amidst the general ruin of the neighbourhood, and the Priests butchered, or flying from scenes of almost-unequalled wildness and desolation. Numerous safeguards, (for so they are called,) or lodgings beneath the ground, which also are yet to be seen, indicate the horrid nature of these transactions, and hint what the manners of men must have been in those times; for they were times when ferocious customs struck at the very existence of society, bidding defiance to all means of civilization; when laws held them in with a palsied hand, and the dependence of the inhabitants on a regular government was uncertain and unregarded.
  picturesque beauty
VII. As the business of the following Plans is to conduct the stranger to those places which furnish the views and landscapes of different kinds in the neighbourhood of these Lakes, and which the taste of the times has been so pleased with, I shall offer nothing upon that subject here, but an observation which I think the greatest artist will excuse: It is, that those pictures impart the most grateful sensations to the mind, which are expressive, not only of general beauties, or such as may be found common to most places, but of the particular nature and local genius of the country from the objects of which they are drawn. Thus a sunny day, a stream of water, a ruin, or other kind of building, may be with almost every where, and may be sorted in such a manner as to form a pleasant view: But the solemnity of those vapours which hang upon mountains in drizzly and gleamy weather, the shades which they occasion, their silent mixing and rolling together, their magnifying effects, with the tops of the mountains peeping above, as it were in another world, lead away the mind from scenes of cultivation, and present ideas of a new, but not less pleasing kind. It is unnatural, at least it feels so to me, and subversive to the general tenor of the piece, to be studious of introducing copies of the works of man, and numerous living figures, amidst such solitudes. For example, I have seen a drawing of Dun-Dornadilla, in the North-Highlands, which seemed to me excellent of its kind: there was a pensive loneliness about that ruined pile which corresponded well with the dreary nakedness of the vast hills that rose around it. On the contrary, I have seen views of the mountains contiguous to these lakes, at the bases of which were delineated chaises and waggons: such vehicles might indeed possibly be dragged along there, but they were far from being, (if I may be allowed the expression,) native objects, or consonant with the rest of the piece.
I may here be asked, what I meant in my seventh paragraph, at the beginning of this Introduction, mentioning the affinity between painting and poetry? I may also be told, that many have heard of the scenes to be met with near these lakes; but where are the poets, or the poetry? As I have not leisure to answer such questions at present, I shall leave them to be resolved at another time.
  soils
  weather

VIII. I pass next to a subject which falls more immediately in my way, and is more intimately connected with my present business. I mean a general account of the soil and weather of these parts; under which head, though I may take notice of some things common to many places, especially mountainous ones, yet I do not think them on that account less proper here.
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