The English Lakes

The present book, it must be understood, treats the English Lakes rather apart from various other elements comprised in what is known as the Lake District. There is so much to say of the waters and their immediate surroundings that no space has remained to describe mountain, pass, and tarn in the manner their beauties merit. Other limits to the book are due to the writer’s promiscuity of taste. I am interested in most things—antiquities, fauna, flora, sports, geology, entomology, and the like; but in not one of these subjects have I that erudite knowledge which might render my work of profit. This book is written to interest those who love out-of-doors without claiming any particular study there. Of the paintings—I can only commend them to notice. In my humblest manner I assert that only an artist who feels the beauty of his environment thoroughly could produce work so stamped with the innate character of our Lakeland.