t William and I walked
through the village to the shore of the lake. When I came close to the
houses, I could not but regret a want of loveliness correspondent with
the beauty of the situation and the appearance of the village at a little
distance; not a single ornamented garden. We saw potatoes and cabbages,
but never a honeysuckle. Yet there were wild gardens, as beautiful as
any that ever man cultivated, overgrowing the roofs of some of the
cottages, flowers and creeping plants. How elegant were the wreaths of
the bramble that had 'built its own bower' upon the riggins in several
parts of the village; therefore we had chiefly to regret the want of
gardens, as they are symptoms of leisure and comfort, or at least of no
painful industry. Here we first saw houses without windows, the smoke
coming out of the open window-places; the chimneys were like stools with
four legs, a hole being left in the roof for the smoke, and over that a
slate placed upon four sticks--sometimes the whole leaned as if it were
going to fall. The fields close to Luss lie flat to the lake, and a
river, as large as our stream near the church at Grasmere, flows by the
end of the village, being the same which comes down the glen behind the
inn; it is very much like our stream--beds of blue pebbles upon the
shores.

We walked towards the head of the lake, and from a large pasture field
near Luss, a gentle eminence, had a very interesting view back upon the
village and the lake and islands beyond. We then perceived that Luss
stood in the centre of a spacious bay, and that close to it lay another
small one, within the larger, where the boats of the inhabitants were
lying at anchor, a beautiful natural harbour. The islands, as we look
down the water, are seen in great beauty. Inch-ta-vanach, the same that
framed out the little peaceful lake which we had passed in the morning,
towers above the rest. The lake is very wide here, and the opposite
shores not being lofty the chief part of the permanent beauty of this
view is among the islands, and on the near shore, including the low
promontories of the bay of Luss, and the village; and we saw it under its
dullest aspect--the air cold, the sky gloomy, without a glimpse of
sunshine.

On a splendid evening, with the light of the sun diffused over the whole
islands, distant hills, and the broad expanse of the lake, with its
creeks, bays, and little slips of water among the islands, it must be a
glori