William Wordsworth and the Laka District.

The Lake District is in the northwest corner of England. It is a popular area with people who like walking and sailing. The mountains there are only 3,000 ft. high, but they still have the effect of great mass and strength. The high hillsides are bare and grassy, but the valleys and lakesides are gentle and thickly wooded.

On the north-west side of the Pennine system, marked off from it by hte upper valleys of the rivers Eden and Lune lies the Lake District, containing the beautiful lakes which give it its name. It is variously termed the Lake Country, Lakeland and The Lakes.

Much of the land is high and thinly peopled. This high parts are used as rough pasture for sheep. Most of the farmland is on the low ground and as conditions are too wet for cropping it is chiefly under grass. there are few mineral resources and ores proved too poor or too limited to be worth mining.

The lakes which occupy many of its ice-deepened valleys show a wonderful variety of character. The largest lakes are Windermere, Coniston water, Derwent water and Ullswater. There are numerous swift and clear streams and smal water-falls and though the altitude is not great. (Scafell Pike which is the highest peak is only 3,210 ft.), the individual masses tower over the surounding areas. The whole region is well known or its great natural beauty.

Before Wordsworth, few people thought of going there, but during his lifetime the Lake District became a centre of pilgrimage for many young English poets.

Wordsworth was born in 1770 on the edge of the Lake District in a small town called Cockermouth. His early experience of this country provided a major source of inspiration for his later poetry. In The Prelude, he says that the full grandeur of Nature first struck him when, as a small boy, he rowed across a lake and felt the presence of a huge mountain towering above him. Before settling in the Lake District in 1799, Wordsworth had lived for a time in Somerset, and had also travelled widely throughout France and Germany. When traveling, Wordsworth had usually walked -
- in fact, he had walked from London to the Swiss Alps.
Back in the Lake District, Wordsworth lived with his sister, Dorothy, in a small cottage, known as Dove Cottage. His greatest poetry was written here and today the cottage is kept as a memorial and museum to him. Dove Cottage is just outside the village of Grasmere. Close by lie two small lakes, called Grasmere and Rydal Water, and to the south lies the great lake of Windermere.