What can, in truth, be
more absurd than that either rich or poor should be spared the
trouble of travelling by the high roads over so short a space,
according to their respective means, if the unavoidable consequence
must be a great disturbance of the retirement, and, in many places,
a destruction of the beauty, of the country which the parties are
come in search of? Would not this be pretty much like the child's
cutting up his drum to learn where the sound came from?"
The truth of these words has become more conspicuous since
Wordsworth's day. The Lake country is now both engirdled and
intersected with railways. The point to which even the poorest of
genuine lovers of the mountains could desire that his facilities of
cheap locomotion should be carried has been not only reached but far
overpassed. If he is not content to dismount from his railway
carriage at Coniston, or Seascale, or Bowness,--at Penrith, or
Troutbeek, or Keswick,--and to move at eight miles an hour in a coach,
or at four miles an hour on foot, while he studies that small
intervening tract of country, of which every mile is a separate gem,--
when, we may ask, _is_ he to dismount? What _is_ he to study? Or is
nothing to be expected from Nature but a series of dissolving views?
It is impossible to feel sanguine as to the future of this
irreplaceable national possession.
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