Nearer, there are high, green
slopes, well wooded, but with such decent and well-behaved wood as you
perceive has grown up under the care of man; still no wildness, no
ruggedness,--as how should there be, when, every half-mile or so, a
porter's lodge or a gentleman's gateway indicates that the whole region
is used up for villas. On the opposite shore of the lake there is a
mimic castle, which I suppose I might have mistaken for a real one two
years ago. It is a great, foolish toy of gray stone.
A steamboat comes to the pier as many as six times a day, and
stage-coaches and omnibuses stop at the door still oftener, communicating
with Ambleside and the town of Windermere, and with the railway, which
opens London and all the world to us. We get no knowledge of our
fellow-guests, all of whom, like ourselves, live in their own circles,
and are just as remote from us as if the lake lay between. The only
words I have spoken since arriving here have been to my own family or to
a waiter, save to one or two young pedestrians who met me on a walk, and
asked me the distance to Lowwood Hotel. "Just beyond here," said I, and
I might stay for months without occasion to speak again.
Yesterday forenoon J----- and I walked to Ambleside,--distant barely two
miles. It is a little town, chiefly of modern aspect, built on a very
uneven hillside, and with very irregular streets and lanes, which
bewilder the stranger as much as those of a larger city.
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