Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/53

 in their beautiful country as it is on the road from Glasgow to London. Even granting that a Keswick man will be able to go to Ambleside in a very short time, does that argument make the railway desirable? Wordsworth observed, in his letters to a daily paper in 1844, that 'the staple of this country is, in fact, its beauty and its character of seclusion and retirement.' Cannot England afford herself the luxury of one district where she can enjoy this peaceful beauty? Are her men and women become so weak that they cannot walk in England the distances which would seem so short in Switzerland? Every one knows that this is not the case. The frosty Caucasus and the high Alps are the playing-ground of Englishmen and Englishwomen, and it is really curious if they cannot walk a few miles at home. To be spared a walk of that sort is almost all they could gain by the railway, if the railway has no other raison d'être than to save horse hire and shoe leather.

When Wordsworth wrote his letters in 1844, he had to combat the charge of selfish exclusiveness. Why, it was asked, should he, the patron of the poor when the poor chanced to be idiot boys and leech gatherers, try to prevent the intelligent poor from sharing his enjoyment? He had done for the Lakes what Clough was afraid of doing to his Highland waterfall, 'made it a lion, and got it at last into guide books.' Why did he wish to prevent the working classes from seeing