e beginning 'While beams of orient light.'

386. _Alston: American Painter_.

'Wings at my shoulder seem to play' (IX. iii. l. 9).

In these lines I am under obligation to the exquisite picture of
'Jacob's Dream,' by Mr. Alston, now in America. It is pleasant to make
this public acknowledgment to a man of genius, whom I have the honour to
rank among my friends.

387. _Mountain-ridges_. [_Ibid._ IV. l. 20.]

The multiplication of mountain-ridges, described at the commencement of
the third stanza of this Ode as a kind of Jacob's Ladder, leading to
Heaven, is produced either by watery vapours or sunny haze; in the
present instance by the latter cause. Allusions to the Ode, entitled
'Intimations of Immortality,' pervade the last stanza of the foregoing
Poem.

XVII. POEMS COMPOSED OR SUGGESTED DURING A TOUR IN THE SUMMER OF 1833.

388. _Advertisement_.

Having been prevented by the lateness of the season, in 1831, from
visiting Staffa and Iona, the author made these the principal objects of
a short tour in the summer of 1833, of which the following series of
poems is a Memorial. The course pursued was down the Cumberland river
Derwent, and to Whitehaven; thence (by the Isle of Man, where a few days
were passed,) up the Frith of Clyde to Greenock, then to Oban, Staffa,
Iona, and back towards England by Loch Awe, Inverary, Loch Goil-head,
Greenock, and through parts of Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and Dumfriesshire
to Carlisle, and thence up the River Eden, and homeward by Ullswater.

389. _The Greta_.

'But if thou, like Cocytus,' &c. (IV. l. 5).

Many years ago, when I was at Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, the hostess of
the inn, proud of her skill in etymology, said, that 'the name of the
river was taken from the _bridge_, the form of which, as every one must
notice, exactly resembled a great A.' Dr. Whitaker has derived it from
the word of common occurrence in the north of England, '_to greet_;'
signifying to lament aloud, mostly with weeping; a conjecture rendered
more probable from the stony and rocky channel of both the Cumberland
and Yorkshire rivers. The Cumberland Greta, though it does not, among
the country people, take up _that_ name till within three miles of its
disappearance in the river Derwent, may be considered as having its
source in the mountain cove of Wythburn, and flowing through Thirlmere,
the beautiful features of which lake are known only to those who,
travelling between Gra