: The Bath Keepers; Or Paris in Those Days v.2 (Novels of Paul de Kock Volume VIII) by Kock Paul De - French fiction Translations into English

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INDEX 64

FACING PAGE

THE ISLE OF MAN

THE ISLAND AS A WHOLE

Either Ruskin or Wordsworth--I forget for the moment which--says somewhere that the English Lake Country begins where its mountains first become visible over the sands of Morecambe Bay. This, indeed, is a proper rebuke to the foolish modern tendency--so entirely subversive of all real aesthetic appreciation--which wishes always to hurry us into the very heart of a beautiful district, instead of encouraging us to approach it by insensible gradations, thus allowing its beauties to work up gradually to their natural and proper climax. Luckily this mistake is impossible in the case of the Isle of Man, which is necessarily approached by water. It is astonishing, indeed, from what great distances its mountains are visible over the Irish Sea. On any fine evening they are plainly conspicuous from anywhere along the level strip of land that constitutes the south-west coast of Cumberland; it is not necessary, in fact, to climb to the summit of Black Comb in order to see

Main ocean, breaking audibly, and stretched Far into silent regions blue and pale-- And visibly engirding Mona's Isle.

The prospect thus afforded is one of singular distant attractiveness, though the Isle of Man presents no such splendid group of huddled peaks as the Cumberland fells present, in their turn, as seen from the Isle of Man. Only North Barrule, indeed, towards the north end of the island, rises to a distinct and graceful cone.

The Isle of Man has suffered, if we may say so without paradox, from the excess of its own popularity. For many years past it has been the favourite touring ground of holiday-makers from the crowded manufacturing district of South Lancashire; and this, perhaps, has rather tended to discourage those quiet lovers of Nature who, though not exactly addicted to taking their pleasures sadly, at any rate prefer to enjoy occasional solitude, and do not always appreciate the joys of a noisy crowd. Douglas, indeed, in the season is crowded with merry trippers, who pour into it from steamer after steamer, and tax its accommodation to the breaking point. And what is true of Douglas is perhaps also true, in a modified degree, of Ramsey, and even of Port Erin and Peel. These, of course, are centres from which brakes and char-?-bancs and waggonettes perambulate every corner of the island; even the culminating summit of Snaefell itself is now climbed by a double line of electric railway, and crowned by a huge hotel. "Pretty as the island is," says Mr. Haskett Smith, "its hills are nothing more than hills, except where they are also railways or tea-gardens." Tea-gardens, no doubt, are abundantly in evidence; and there is scarcely a glen in the whole island that is not rigorously kept under lock and key, and only to be opened at a price. The tripper element, again, in the Isle of Man is probably responsible for the absence of the old-fashioned mountain inns--like Wastdale Head, in Cumberland, or Penygwryd, near Snowdon--that form so pleasant a feature among the mountains of England and Wales. There even was once a dancing saloon in the lonely recesses of Injebreck; and no one who loves mountains tolerates dancing in their secret recesses, unless indeed it be the fairies dancing their "ringlets to the whistling wind."

Most people indeed who love Nature will avoid Mona in the "season"; but luckily the "season" is short. From October to Easter the lodging houses are empty, and the island lives its own peculiar life. It is remarkable, indeed, how little permanent harm has been done to its pleasant landscapes by this yearly incursion of the southern Goths and Vandals. Fashion has not dotted its hills with villas, as Windermere has been dotted, and to some extent Ambleside and Coniston. The two streams of life that meet here in summer flow together for a time side by side, but do not seem to commingle. Go there in spring when the fields are full of lambs, and the hedgerows are yellow with primroses. Climb the rolling moorlands that are still red with winter bents, and wander along the hills that drop into the sea so steeply between Peel and Bradda Head. Linger in the old churchyards at Kirk Maughold and Kirkmichael among the immemorial cross-slabs of a long since vanished race; sit among the ruins of St. Patrick's Island--broken cathedral and broken castle, old, mysterious round tower, and ruined pre-Conquest church--till the place is peopled again with dead voices and dead faces, and till the whole island

Glows as if the Middle Age Were gorgeous upon earth again.

You will receive no rude shock in the course of your wandering, nor necessarily encounter a single "tripper." In this way most certainly, but in this way alone, you will "pluck out the heart of mystery" of pleasant, green "Ellan Vannin."

CONCERNING PEEL

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