We reached Bowness, on Lake Windermere, in the evening.

The next morning we went up to Elleray, the country residence of Professor Wilson ("Christopher North"), who, unfortunately, was absent in Edinburgh.

We hired a boatman to row us through exquisitely beautiful Windermere, and in the evening reached the Salutation Inn, at the foot of the lake.

My great interest in visiting Ambleside was to see the venerable poet, Wordsworth, who lived about a mile from the village.

I happened, just before supper, to look out of the window of the traveller's room and espied an old man in a blue cloak and Glengarry cap, with a bunch of heather stuck jauntily in the top, driving by in a little brown phaeton from Rydal Mount.
"Perhaps," thought I to myself, "that may be the patriarch himself," and sure enough it was.