ess
by Lowood. Let us form a straggling line of march--so that we may one
and all indulge in our own silent fancies--and let not a word be spoken,
virgins--under the penalty of two kisses for one syllable--till we crown
the height above Briary-Close. Why, there it is already--and we hear our
musical friend's voice-accompanied guitar. From the front of his
cottage, the head and shoulders of Windermere are seen in their most
majestic shape--and from nowhere else is the long-withdrawing Langdale
so magnificently closed by mountains. There at sunset hangs "Cloudland,
gorgeous land," by gazing on which for an hour we shall all become
poets and poetesses. Who said that Windermere was too narrow? The same
critic who thinks the full harvest moon too round--and despises the
twinkling of the evening star. It is all the way down--from head to
foot--from the Brathay to the Leven--of the proper breadth precisely--to
a quarter of an inch. Were the reeds in Poolwyke Bay--on which the birds
love to balance themselves--at low or high water, to be visible longer
or shorter than what they have always been in the habit of being on such
occasions since first we brushed them with an oar, when landing in our
skiff from the Endeavour, the beauty of the whole of Windermere would be
impaired--so exquisitely adapted is that pellucid gleam to the lips of
its sylvan shores. True, there are flaws in the diamond--but only when
the squalls come; and as the blackness sweeps by, that diamond of the
first water is again sky-bright and sky-blue as an angel's eyes. Lowood
Bay--we are now embarked in Mr Jackson's prettiest pinnace--when the sun
is westering--which it now is--surpasses all other bays in fresh-water
mediterraneans. Eve loves to see her pensive face reflected in that
serenest mirror. To flatter such a divinity is impossible--but sure she
never wears a smile so divine as when adjusting her dusky tresses in
that truest of all glasses, set in the richest of all frames. Pleased
she retires--with a wavering motion--and casting "many a longing,
lingering look behind," fades indistinctly away among the Brathay woods;
while Night, her elder sister, or rather her younger--we really know not
which--takes her place at the darkening mirror, till it glitters with
her crescent-moon-coronet, wreathed perhaps with a white cloud, and just
over the silver bow the lustre of one large yellow star.

As none of the party complain of hunger, let us crack among us a s