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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
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[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.
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