What effect on the character of such a population will be produced
by the influx of that of the suburbs of our manufacturing towns
there is evidence enough, if the reader cares to ascertain the facts,
in every newspaper on his morning table."
[Footnote 6: _A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the
Lake District_,--Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1876.]
There remains the question of how the greatest benefit is to be
secured to visitors to the country, quite apart from the welfare of
its more permanent inhabitants. At first sight this question seems
to present a problem of a well-known order--to find the point of
maximum pleasure to mankind in a case where the intensity of the
pleasure varies inversely as its extension--where each fresh person
who shares it diminishes _pro tanto_ the pleasure of the rest. But,
as Wordsworth has pointed out, this is not in reality the question
here. To the great mass of cheap excursionists the characteristic
scenery of the Lakes is in itself hardly a pleasure at all. The
pleasure, indeed, which they derive from contact with Nature is
great and important, but it is one which could be offered to them,
not only as well but much better, near their own homes.
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