At Comer’s Gate we entered the National Trust estate, and drove along the central highway that runs for three miles over a treeless moor of heather, mixed with bright green whortleberry and young bracken.  We were on high ground, 1,100 feet above sea-level.  Away to the south-west lifted Dunkery Beacon.  What astonished us most was that, on the high swelling uplands right and left of us, the ground was covered with promise of future harvest—patches of green corn, striped here and there with other patches of golden charlock, whilst out of the hedgerows stood up trees almost of forest growth. (pp. 110-111)….

No grouse are found here, but the black game breed and flourish.  After passing along for a couple of miles in this magnificent air we came to the cross-roads that lead respectively to Cutcombe and down to Tarr or Torr Steps. (p. 111)….

For here on Winsford Hill we are back in a very ancient historic past.  Mounsey Castle, a British encampment, is not far away.  Down in the hollow lies the most interesting prehistoric bridge, Torr or Tarr Steps, that exists in Somersetshire; and as we stand by this stone of Caranticus we can go back in fancy to a time when as yet the name of Christ had not been heard in this wild upland. (p. 113)

There is reason to believe that the folk who made their rude enclosures for tilth hereabout, and raised their earthworks for defence, were the Belgic Celts, who settled on these seaward moorlands, sea-moor-œtas, who came here about 350 B. C.  They gave the names, that still exist, to Dunkery, to Cutcombe, to Dulverton and Dunster, they were never defeated by Roman or Dane, and even when Athelstan made the land English, in the year 926, and drove many of the inhabitants beyond the Tamar, they still clung to higher grounds, and have left behind them, in the colour of the hair and in the dark eyes of the farm folk of the district, ineffaceable racial characteristics that tell us they are Belgic Celts still. (p. 113)

Leaving the “Long Stone,” we went down swiftly from the upland and made our way by Liskham farm, to Tarr or Torr Steps, by one of the steepest and worst metalled roads a motor-car was ever driven over.  The silence of the moorland was changed for the singing of birds.  The blackbird fluted, and the garden warbler thrilled the air with his ecstasy.  As we went we saw on the opposite side of the valley a drove of Exmoor ponies, and determined to visit the pony farm on our return journey.  We had heard much of the wonder of the prehistoric Tarr Steps, and were not disappointed.  Across the silver-shining Barle the long-vanished race had determined to build, not only for futurity, but in such a manner as to defy all rage of flood that the Barle could fling against it.  They laid their rough piers four feet above the ordinary summer level of the stream, and protected these piers with sloping fender stones.  Then, with exquisite nicety, they poised upon these piers huge slabs of grey rock, the biggest 8 feet long by 5 feet wide.  They used no mortar, but they must have had very accurate knowledge of weight and the power of resistance of weight against the rushing flood-water.  These stones remain just as they were placed , probably more than two thousand two hundred years ago, though the river in winter time has been known to rise 4 feet above the bridge. (pp. 113-114)

One does not know which to wonder at most: the accurate laying of the stones, which reminds one of the exquisite craft of pyramid builders, or the labour by which these great weights were conveyed hither; for Sir Thomas Acland told me that each of these stones must have been brought from a distance of not less than twenty miles. (pp. 114-115)….

We ascended the steep hill from the ford with difficulty, and made our way to Old Ashway farm, in which for generations the Acland family have reared their pure-blooded drove of Exmoor ponies.  The master of the house was away, but his only daughter, a pure Celt, with her raven-black hair and dark eyes, gave us courteous welcome, and learning that we wished to see the ponies, who for all we knew might be at the back-of-beyond, she ran off to hail a lad to help her, and in a few moments two of the ponies used to the work of rounding up the rest, came scampering down to the farmyard, and made straight for their stalls.  Whilst the lad was saddling them she went to the house, and Diana of the Moor, after making a dramatically quick change, reappeared in riding kit of khaki coat and breeches, red cap and stock whip in hand, and in another moment was mounted and we saw her flashing up the hill, she and the pony as one, and while she disappeared from sight the lad went off on his pony in another direction.  We waited ten minutes or so, and a drove of twenty delicate-limbed creatures, with mealy muzzles, rushed down on to the meadow beside the farm, and drew up short to gaze at the strangers.  I noticed that on the ham of each pony was the indelible Acland mark for pure breed, an anchor, and I ascertained that the average number of foals each year is about forty;  that of these about twenty are kept, as up to standard in size and colour, for three or four years, but the rest are sold as suckers. (pp. 115-116)

The great fair of the year, at which all Exmoor ponies are sold, takes place at Bampton on the third Thursday in October, when by use immemorial the whole main street is given up to a ramping, trampling multitude.  The shutters are put up and the whole place during the time of sale is pandemonium.  But every Exmoor pony that goes there finds a buyer, the bulk of them being destined for pit ponies, for which they are in constant demand. (pp. 116-117)

It was a little sorrowful to think that these bright-eyed creatures, such embodiments of the spirits of the moorland, should be allowed so short a time in the sun and wind upon their native uplands. (p. 117)

(A Nation’s Heritage, pp. 109-118)

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Wordsworth’s country lies all before us.  Let us then, in imagination, enter Lakeland from the south, en route for Keswick and Southey-land, by way of Windermere, Ambleside, Rydal, and Grasmere.  Not by the “causeways,” no longer “bad,” that so jolted Scott and Lockhart when they made their pilgrimage to Windermere in 1825, not by the railway, that moved Wordsworth to such passionate protest in 1844, but by the smooth water-way of Lake Windermere.  Whoever refuses to enter by that water-gate misses much of the joy of a first impression of Westmoreland scenery.  We have left the town of Ulph the Dane, with its lighthouse monument to the local worthy, Sir John Barrow, the naval hydrographer.  We have gained Lakeside.  If we care to know how Wordsworth’s poetry influenced and refined the life of a simple yeoman’s son and filled it with perpetual benison, we shall be tempted to make an expedition hence into the beautiful Winster valley, and visit Borderside where between 1848 and ’56 dwelt the tender-hearted naturalist, philosopher, and poet William Pearson.  If we are interested in the painters of the English Lakes, we shall go aside to visit the grave of young Talbot, one of John Ruskin’s most devoted and most promising pupils, who perished by cold caught in the act of putting on record some of the wondrous snow effects of our fair winter land.  He lies in the Finsthwaite churchyard. (pp. 72-73)

Why is it we are so deaf to the call of artist and poet alike, to come hither at the time of year which is the best for mountain beauty?  “Come in winter!” Southey would say.  “Come in autumn!” Wordsworth would cry.  “The months of September and October (particularly October),” writes the Rydal poet, “are generally attended with much finer weather; and the scenery is then beyond comparison more diversified, more splendid, more beautiful.” (p. 73)

But we would say, let the traveller come hither in January, when the roads and lanes run between russet hedges of the red beech leaf, or between walls that are mottled green and silver from ground to coping with lichen and rich moss.  Let him come in February, when the purple bloom is on the alder-bud, and the tassels of the hazel are first out-hung, and the copses are still warm with the ruddy leafage of the oak.  Let him wander into Westmoreland in March and April, when the blood of the new life is flushing the birch bark, or the lemon glow of the first awakening to spring is seen in the larchen grove, and he will feel that green summer is, with all its beauty, less fair upon our hills and vales than autumn gold or winter whiteness, than spring clad in February russet or in March purple. (pp. 73-4)….

But all dinners come to an end, and away to Bowness, late in the evening, rowed the Professor of Elleray [John Wilson, aka Christopher North] and his distinguished guests, the former with determination to be up with the lark.  For to-morrow, Monday, is to be the regatta in honour of the “great unknown,” the Wizard of the North; “Christopher North,” as Lord High Admiral of Windermere, has determined that all the rowing boats on the lake—then thirty-five or forty in number—shall be dressed in bunting, and shall assemble after luncheon in Bowness Bay.  There, with all the available music in the district, two scratch bands, headed by the Elleray barge full of Wilsons, Pennys, and Watsons, and presided over by Mrs. Wilson, in “grand turban and flying streamers,” the procession will pass down to Storrs.  There Mr. Bolton will bring off his boat-load of Poetry and Statesmanship. (pp. 79-80)

Three cheers will be given as Scott and Canning and Wordsworth join the flotilla, and away under the Admiral’s command will go the whole gay water-party snaking in and out of the bays, and rowing round the islands for the space of three hours or more, with cheerings of spectators from various points of the shore and “fluffings off” of small cannon by way of salute.  And as for the bands, they are to play whatever they can and like, so only that they cease not from their lilting.  The Professor is determined that the great Singer of the North shall have music wherever he goes.  That the programme was carried out to the letter on this eventful 22nd of August, 1825, we know.  The day was calm and sunny, and “the sight,” says Sir Walter, “was altogether really a beautiful one, gay and elegant, and very new to us.” (p. 80)

Distance lent enchantment to the memorable scene, for Lockhart in less bilious mood thus described it afterwards:—"There was a ‘high discourse,’” says he, “intermingled with as gay flashings of courtly wit as ever Canning displayed; and a plentiful allowance, on all sides, of those airy transient pleasantries, in which the fancy of poets, however wise and grave, delights to run riot when they are sure not to be misunderstood.  The weather was as Elysian as the scenery.  There were brilliant cavalcades through the woods in the mornings, and delicious boatings on the lake by moonlight; and the last day the ‘Admiral of the Lake’ presided over one of the most splendid regattas that ever enlivened Windermere.  Perhaps there were not fewer than fifty barges following in the Professor’s radiant procession, when it paused at the point of Storrs to admit into the place of honour the vessel that carried Mr. Bolton and his guests.  The bards of the Lakes” (Wordsworth and Wilson, for Southey had erysipelas of the foot, and could not leave Greta Hall) “led the cheers that hailed Scott and Canning; and music and sunshine, flags, streamers, and gay dresses, the merry hum of voices, and the rapid splashing of innumerable oars, made up a dazzling mixture of sensations as the flotilla wound its way among the richly foliaged islands, and along bays and promontories peopled with enthusiastic spectators.”  (pp. 80-81)

(Literary Associations of the English Lakes, Vol. II, pp. 72-92)

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Sir,—Having just returned from a few weeks’ tour in the wine-growing districts of Provence, I can endorse all that your correspondent in your issue of to-day says as to the disappointment and sense of lack of sympathy with France in her trouble that has been caused by the unfortunate clause in our new Budget which affects her vital interests.  Is it too late to allay the feeling of injustice which our Allies with some reason believe themselves to the victims of?  If ever there was a moment when nothing we could possibly help should be allowed to jeopardise the Entente Cordiale—upon which so much of the peace of Europe depends—surely this is the time.  With coal at famine prices and still going up (I heard of £13 a ton being paid at Lyon), with the value of the franc steadily going down, the one hope of a large agricultural community in the South of France lay in an industry that needed little or no coal for its manufacture.  All that we could do as an Allay to stimulate this industry should have been done.  A wise and understanding nation, rather than add to the impost on its importation, should have reduced it at this juncture, but, on the contrary, our legislators have, in a moment of unimaginative thoughtlessness, taken an opposite view, and have caused distress and indignation throughout France.  Now, I am sure that they have no more belief in a policy of pin-ricks than I have, but I am equally sure that they lack imagination.  They cannot put themselves in a French peasant’s place; they cannot see how vital the wine industry is to the small propriétaire, thousands of whom I have lately seen at their task from dawn to dark; they cannot understand that the one hope of a people crushed by the burden of the late war lay, in some parts of France, in the returns of the vintage, and to jeopardise one sou’s worth of this return to the wine-dresser was sure to be resented, and certain to be considered unfriendly and unjustifiable.  For this catastrophic harm to international good will I blame our British lack of imagination.  I saw a good example of this lack of imagination only yesterday in the Cathedral at Amiens.  There, in one of the side chapels, are enshrined the American, the Canadian, and the Australian flags.  The British war authorities had apparently not thought it worth while to present the Cathedral with a Union Jack.  Fifty years hence, our children’s children, wandering through Amiens Cathedral, will wonder why it was Britain kept out of the Great War.  We lack imagination!

(Times, 26 April 1920, p. 10.

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The Rev. Canon Rawnsley, before distributing the prizes, said it was a great pleasure as well as a duty to come to their prize-giving, because he was one of those who believed that the backbone of England was in its schools….  That afternoon he wished to speak to them of the meaning of the word Windermere and hang up his teaching on each of the letters of the word. 

He chose Work for the first letter, W, because they were going to have their holidays, and no shirker at school could possibly enjoy his holidays; the only boys who were going to have a fine time now were the boys who had done their very best and had worked hard during the year….

The next letter, I, signified Industry.  They had heard just now a great deal about boys who earned a great deal of credit to themselves and to the school, whose only joy it was to win honour to themselves and the school, and to give delight and pleasure to their parents.  When they passed away from the school, they would be found many a time in a tight place, but they would do their duty for the love of the old school.  He asked them to have a love of industry—he believed in the plodding, to do one’s best, and he urged them to be the great plodders at school such as John Nelson and Sidney Studholme; these lads had shown throughout the term a willingness to stick and put their shoulders to the work of the school for the joy of the whole school.

He came now to N for Nerve—actually they learned in school games to get them the nerve which would last them for life….  Let them go in for games with all their heart; it would win them nerve.

The letter D recalled to him the motto of the school at York, “Disce ut Doceas,” which meant “learn that you may teach.”  If the lads would take that as their motto from the very first day they entered school, he believed they would be fulfilling their highest purpose, and the boy who looked on his task at school not as something to be got through as the penalty or punishment of being at school, but as a joy and a pleasure, he would be sure to go on learning something useful all his life….

E suggested Education.  What was it?  It was not the mere cramming of their heads and minds with certain facts.  He would tell them what it was.  It was to kindle by their work such a love of the facts they learned that they would go on loving them to the end.  It was mind matter—a real awakening within themselves of mind and mind matter….  It was the sole object of school to teach them to govern themselves; not so much to be governed as to exercise self-control and self-restraint.  That was the true joy of education.  The headmaster did not want them to be clever parrots; he wanted them to go out into the world with minds of their own, and make the world better….

R meant Resourcefulness, which suggested the usefulness of the workshop.  He urged them to go on with their work with their hands.  No one could be said to be educated unless side by side with the headwork he had a handicraft….

M stood for Manners—he thought sometimes boys forgot manners.  He might say that a good-mannered man was able to influence people more than a clever but bad-mannered man….

E was for England or English.  There was a feeling that their English wanted looking after; there had not been the chance as there ought to be to get completely acquainted with the laws of English composition….

The letter R was for Reading.  They had been cramming their heads so that there was no time for reading….

The last letter, E, was for Eye—the power of observation….  He said shame on the Windermere boy who had no love for the beauty of his district…..  Why should they not have their hearts lifted up by every single flower and bud?  He asked them to learn to observe—to use their eyes.  They must remember that school was fitting them for their after life….       

(Lakes Chronicle and Reporter, 5 August, 1909, p. 5)

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