chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens--his desk
was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he raised
them from his work--the fields of waving corn, the green expanse of
meadows, the sail-dotted river.



RYDAL MOUNT [Footnote: From "Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent
British Poets."]

BY WILLIAM HOWITT

As you advance a mile or more on the road from Ambleside toward
Grasmere, a lane overhung with trees turns up to the right, and there,
at some few hundred yards from the highway, stands the modest cottage of
the poet, elevated on Rydal Mount, so as to look out over the
surrounding sea of foliage, and to take in a glorious view. Before it,
at some distance across the valley, stretches a high screen of bold and
picturesque mountains; behind, it is overtowered by a precipitous hill,
called Nab-scar; but to the left, you look down over the broad waters of
Windermere, and to the right over the still and more embosomed flood
of Grasmere.

Whichever way the poet pleases to advance from his house, it must be
into scenery of that beauty of mountain, stream, wood, and lake, which
has made Cumberland so famous over all England. He may steal away up
backward from his gate and ascend into the solitary hills, or diverging
into the grounds of Lady Mary Fleming, his near neighbor, may traverse
the deep shades of the woodland, wander along the banks of the rocky
rivulet, and finally stand before the well known waterfall there. If he