and
coloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to be
distinguished--strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them very
old; villages, apart from one another a mile--and there are three--yet
on their sites, distant and different in much though they be, all
associated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all the
Dale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and even
mountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensive
aliens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains are
not so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and the
Passes over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, are
magnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself might
rejoice.

No--there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale.
Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beauty
though less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as it
were, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, but
prevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rocks
continue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along the
corries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer to
rise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake of
their needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal the
pine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline among
the heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there are
but huts, and every house have its garden:--such changes are now going
on, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even though
sometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from old
associations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we should
have loved to see preserved.

And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one often
drops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night's
lodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their own
green hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildest
moors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is their
serenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrong
to call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell as
deep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hills
slope down gen