pse I caught of that Abode, by Thee
Designed to rise in humble privacy.

He imagines the house which Sir George Beaumont intended to build at
Loughrigg Tarn, but which he never erected, to be really built by his
friend, very much as in the sonnet named _Anticipation, October, 1803_,
he supposes England to have been invaded, and the battle fought in which
"the Invaders were laid low."

... behold a Peasant stand
On high, a kerchief waving in her hand!

See the Fenwick note preceding the poem.

... a barren ridge we scale;
Descend and reach, in Yewdale's depths, a plain.

They went up Little Langdale, I think, past the Tarn to Fell Foot, and
crossed over the ridge of Tilberthwaite, into Yewdale by the copper
mines.

Under a rock too steep for man to tread,
Where sheltered from the north and bleak north-west
Aloft the Raven hangs a visible nest,
Fearless of all assaults that would her brood molest.

There is a Raven crag in Yewdale, evidently the one referred to in this
passage, and also in the passage in the first book of _The Prelude_ (see
vol. iii. p. 142), beginning--

Oh! when I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustained, etc.

... toward the lowly Grange
Press forward,

To Waterhead at the top of Coniston Lake.

In connection with Loughrigg Tarn, compare the note to the poem
beginning--

So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,

and also the Biographical Sketch of Professor Archer Butler, prefixed to
his _Sermons_, vol. i.--ED.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] LOUGHRIGG TARN, alluded to in the foregoing _Epistle_, resembles,
though much smaller in compass, the Lake Nemi, or _Speculum Dianae_ as it
is often called, not only in its clear waters and circular form, and the
beauty immediately surrounding it, but also as being overlooked by the
eminence of Langdale Pikes as Lake Nemi is by that of Monte Calvo. Since
this _Epistle_ was written Loughrigg Tarn has lost much of its beauty by
the felling of many natural clumps of wood, relics of the old forest,
particularly upon the farm called "The Oaks" from the abundance of that
tree which grew there.

It is to be regretted, upon public grounds, that Sir George Beaumont did
not carry into effect his intention of constructing here a Su