I was enchanted with the Lake District, seeing Windermere, Derwentwater, and Ulleswater, besides several minor lakes; but although I delighted in all inland waters and the Lake District was so near to my own home, I never revisited it. The reason was that, after seeing the grander Highlands of Scotland, I became spoiled for the English Lakes. There was another reason,--the absence of human interest on the English lakes except of a quite modern kind, there being no old castles on shore or island. Lyulph's Tower, on Ulleswater, though immortalized by Wordsworth, is nothing but a modern hunting-box. Nevertheless, I have often regretted that I did not become more familiar with Wordsworth's country in my youth.
The mention of Lyulph's Tower reminds me that when I landed there after a hard pull of seven miles against a strong wind, I was kindly invited to take part in a merry picnic that was just being held there by some farmers of the neighborhood. A very pretty girl asked me to dance, and I afterwards played the fiddle. The scene with the dancers in the foreground on the green sward, and the lake and mountains in the distance, was one of the most poetical I ever beheld.
Turf had been ridden from Keswick to Penrith by the horse-breaker already mentioned, and with infinite difficulty. I would have left him in the breaker's hands, but he refused to mount again, saying that he had done enough for his credit, and so had I for mine. By his advice I took the same resolution, and as nobody in Penrith would ride the brute, he was left to grow still wilder in a green field whilst I went on to Scotland by the train.
I had a cousin at Greenock who was learning to be a marine constructing engineer. He was a young man of remarkable ability, who afterwards distinguished himself in his profession, and might no doubt have made a large fortune if his habits had not been imprudent and unsettled. At that time he was tied to Greenock by an engagement with one of the great firms where he was articled. He had rooms in a quiet street, and offered me hospitality. One day I came in unexpectedly and found a baby in my bed, when the door opened suddenly, and a very pretty girl with dark eyes came and took the baby away with an apology. I immediately said to myself: "My cousin has been privately married, that pair of dark eyes has cost him his liberty, and that child is an infantine relation of mine!" This discovery remained a long time a secret in my own breast, and I affected a complete absence of suspicion during the rest of my stay at Greenock, but it was afterwards fully confirmed. My cousin had, in fact, married at the early age of nineteen, when he was still an articled pupil with Messrs. Caird, and living on an allowance from his father, whom he dared not ask for an increase. He was therefore obliged to eke out his means by teaching mechanical drawing in the evenings; but though his marriage had been an imprudence, it was not a folly. He had, in fact, shown excellent judgment in the choice of a wife. The dark eyes were not all. Behind them there was a soul full of the most cheerful courage, the sweetest affection, the most faithful devotion. For thirty-seven years my cousin's wife followed him everywhere, and bore his roving propensity with wonderful good humor. What that propensity was, the reader may partly realize when I tell him that in those _thirty_-seven years my cousin went through _eighty_-seven removals, some of them across the greatest distances that are to be found upon the planet. The only reason why he did not remove to all the different planets one after another was the absence of a road to them. This tendency of my cousin Orme had been predicted by a French phrenologist at Manchester when he was a boy. The phrenologist had said, after examining his "bumps," that Orme would settle in a place for a short time and appear satisfied at first, as if it were for good, but that very soon afterwards he would go elsewhere and repeat the process. I never met with any other human being who had such an unsettled disposition. The consequence was that he often quitted places where he was extremely prosperous, and people who not only appreciated his extraordinary talents, but were ready to reward them handsomely, in order to go he knew not whither, and undertake he knew not what.