BASSENTHWAITE WATER.

In a gray autumnal morning, we rode out along the western bank of Bassenthwaite to Ouse Bridge, under which the river Derwent, after passing through the lake, takes its course towards the Sea. The road on this side, being impassable by carriages, is seldom visited, but it is interesting for being opposed to Skiddaw, which rises in new attitudes over the opposite bank. Beyond the land, that separates the two lakes, the road runs high along the sides of hills and sometimes at the feet of tremendous fells, one of which rises almost spirally over it, shewing a surface of slates, shivered from top to bottom. Further on, the heights gradually soften from horror into mild and graceful beauty, opening distantly to the cheerful country that spreads towards Whitehaven; but the road soon immerges among woods, which allow only partial views of the opposite shore, inimitably beautiful with copses, green lawns and pastures, with gently sweeping promontories and bays, that receive the lake to their full brims.

From the house at Ouse Bridge the prospect is exquisite up the lake, which now losing the air of a wide river, re-assumes its true character, and even appears to flow into the chasm of rocks, that really inclose Derwentwater. Skiddaw, with all the mountains round Borrowdale, form a magnificent amphitheatrical perspective for this noble sheet of water; the vallies of the two lakes extending to one view, which is, therefore, superior to any exhibited from Derwentwater alone. The prospect terminates in the dark fells of Borrowdale, which by their sublimity enhance the beauty and elegance, united to a surprising degree in the nearer landscape.

Beyond Ouse Bridge, but still at the bottom of the lake, the road passes before Armithwaite-house, whose copsy lawns slope to the margin of the water from a mansion more finely situated than any we had seen. It then recedes somewhat from the bank, and ascends the skirt of Skiddaw, which it scarcely leaves on this side of Keswick. On the opposite shore, the most elegant features are the swelling hills, called Wythop-brows, flourishing with wood from the water's edge; and, below the meadows of the eastern bank, by which we were returning, two peninsulæ, the one pastoral, yet well wooded and embellished by a white hamlet, the other narrow and bearing only a line of trees, issuing far into the lake. But the shores of Bassenthwaite, though elegant and often beautiful, are too little varied to be long dwelt upon; and attention is sometimes unpleasantly engaged by a precipice, from which the road is not sufficiently secured; so that the effect of the whole upon the imagination is much less than might be expected from its situation at the foot of Skiddaw, and its shape, which is more extended than that of Derwentwater.