s. He may see or hear in fancy the winds sweeping over the lakes,
or piping with a loud voice among the mountain peaks; and, lastly, may
think of the primeval woods shedding and renewing their leaves with no
human eye to notice, or human heart to regret or welcome the change.
'When the first settlers entered this region (says an animated writer)
they found it overspread with wood; forest trees, the fir, the oak, the
ash, and the birch had skirted the fells, tufted the hills, and shaded
the vallies, through centuries of silent solitude; the birds and beasts
of prey reigned over the meeker species; and the _bellum inter omnia_
maintained the balance of Nature in the empire of beasts.'

Such was the state and appearance of this region when the aboriginal
colonists of the Celtic tribes were first driven or drawn towards it,
and became joint tenants with the wolf, the boar, the wild bull, the red
deer, and the leigh, a gigantic species of deer which has been long
extinct; while the inaccessible crags were occupied by the falcon, the
raven, and the eagle. The inner parts were too secluded, and of too
little value, to participate much of the benefit of Roman manners; and
though these conquerors encouraged the Britons to the improvement of
their lands in the plain country of Furness and Cumberland, they seem to
have had little connexion with the mountains, except for military
purposes, or in subservience to the profit they drew from the mines.

When the Romans retired from Great Britain, it is well known that these
mountain-fastnesses furnished a protection to some unsubdued Britons,
long after the more accessible and more fertile districts had been
seized by the Saxon or Danish invader. A few, though distinct, traces of
Roman forts or camps, as at Ambleside, and upon Dunmallet, and a few
circles of rude stones attributed to the Druids[56], are the only
vestiges that remain upon the surface of the country, of these ancient
occupants; and, as the Saxons and Danes, who succeeded to the possession
of the villages and hamlets which had been established by the Britons,
seem at first to have confined themselves to the open country,--we may
descend at once to times long posterior to the conquest by the Normans,
when their feudal polity was regularly established. We may easily
conceive that these narrow dales and mountain sides, choaked up as they
must have been with wood, lying out of the way of communication with
other parts of the I