Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/23

 repose of this little unsuspected paradise, but all is peace," &c., &c. Were the Poet now living, how would he have lamented the probable intrusion of a railway with its scarifications, its intersections, its noisy machinery, its smoke, and swarms of pleasure-hunters, most of them thinking that they do not fly fast enough through the country which they have come to see. Even a broad highway may in some places greatly impair the characteristic beauty of the country, as will be readily acknowlodged by those who remember what the Lake of Grasmere was before the new road that runs alonge its eastern margin had been constructed.'

'Quanto prsestantius esset Numen aquae viridi si margine clauderet undas Herba —'

'As it once was, and fringed with wood, instead of the breast work of bare wall that now confines it. In the same manner has the beauty, and still more the sublimity of many Passes in the Alps been injuriously affected. Will the reader excuse a M.S. poem in which I attempted to describe the impression made upon my mind by the descent towards Italy along the Simplon before the new military road had taken place of the old muleteer track with its primitive simplicities?

'Brook and road Were fellow-travellers in this gloomy pass.