button to main menu  Martineau's Complete Guide to the English Lakes, 1855

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Page 14:-
voice, there was no heart that could stand before it. In his hour of emotion, he swept away all hearts, whithersoever he would. No less striking was it to see him in a mood of repose, as he was seen when steering the packet-boat that used to pass between Bowness and Ambleside, before the steamers were put upon the lake. Sitting motionless, with his hand upon the rudder, in the presence of journeymen and market-women, and his eye apparently looking beyond everything into nothing, and his mouth closed above his beard, as if he meant never to speak again, he was quite as impressive and immortal an image as he could have been to the students of his moral philosophy class, or the comrades of his jovial hours. He was known, and with reverence and affection, beside the trout-stream and the mountain tarn, and, amidst the damp gloom of Elleray, where he could not bring himself to let a tree or a sprig be lopped that his wife had loved. Every old boatman and young angler, every hoary shepherd and primitive dame among the hills of the district, knew him and enjoyed his presence. He made others happy by being so intensely happy himself, when his brighter moods were on him; and when he was mournful, no one desired to be gay. He is gone with his joy and his grief; and the region is so much the darker in a thousand eyes.
  Rayrigg
Instead of returning to his inn the way he came, the stranger may make a moderate and pleasant walk by going through Bowness on the Ambleside road, and round by Cook's House. The first noticeable abode that he will see is Rayrigg,- a rather low, rambling, grey house, standing on the grass near a little bay of
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