About the centre and at the highest point of the pass stands an old stone
building of mean appearance, with the usual sign of an alehouse,
"Licensed to retail foreign spirits, ale, and tobacco," over the door,
and another small sign, designating it as the highest inhabitable house
in England. It is a chill and desolate place for a residence. They keep
a visitor's book here, and we recorded our names in it, and were not
too sorry to leave the mean little hovel, smelling as it did of
tobacco-smoke, and possessing all other characteristics of the humblest
alehouse on the level earth.
The Kirkstone, which gives the pass its name, is not seen in approaching
from Ambleside, until some time after you begin to descend towards
Brothers' Water. When the driver first pointed it out, a little way up
the hill on our left, it looked no more than a bowlder of a ton or two in
weight, among a hundred others nearly as big; and I saw hardly any
resemblance to a church or church-spire, to which the fancies of past
generations have likened it. As we descended the pass, however, and left
the stone farther and farther behind, it continued to show itself, and
assumed a more striking and prominent aspect, standing out clearly
relieved against the sky, so that no traveller would fail to observe it,
where there are so few defined objects to attract notice, amid the naked
monotony of the stern hills; though, indeed, if I had taken it for any
sort of an edifice, it would rather have been for a wayside inn or a
shepherd's hut than for a church.
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