Ulverston

“ A little more than half a mile from Wraysholme Tower is Humphrey Head, a huge mass of carboniferous limestone that thrusts its gaunt form far out into the bay, dividing the Milnthorpe from the Ulverston Sands. To the north it rises abruptly from the plain, here grim and grey and lifeless-looking, and there decked with a rich embroidery of lichens, moss, and trailing ivy, while the ledges of the rock are covered with a thick vegetation of ash and hazel, the bright greenery of which is in places relieved by the darker foliage of the yew that here thrives luxuriously. ”

“ Ulverston, Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Cockermouth, all nearly equally accessible from the Kendal railway station, will furnish another interesting route to the traveller.
The midland part of Cumberland consists principally of hills, valleys, and ridges of elevated ground. To the tourist the mountainous district in the south-west is the most interesting and attractive. This part comprises Saddleback, Skiddaw, and Helvellyn, with the lakes of Ulleswater, Thirlmere, Derwent-water, and Bassenthwaite. ”

“ Southwards the view is of an entirely different character. You may trace the course of the Leven as it winds its way beneath the precipitous hills, through the deep-wooded glen, and by the rocky gorge at Backbarrow, where there is a cotton mill that seems strangely out of place, to the shores of Morecambe Bay; the puffs of white steam that ever and anon steal through the umbrage mark the line of the railway from Lakeside to Ulverston, and show the close companionship the rail and the river keep. ”

“ The old hills and the wild fells still lift their heads to the breezes of heaven; the tide ebbs and flows over those broad sands as it did of yore; there are the same bleak moorlands, the same broad fields, the same crops of golden wheat, and the same sun ripening for the harvest; but how changed are all human affairs since earnest George Fox, "the man in leather breeches," discoursed in Ulverston church, and Judge Fell's wife "stood up in her pew and wondered at his doctrine, for she had never heard the like before." ”

“ In clouds, whose rain has left not one stitch dry.
HILL, MILL AND PILL- (BOXES.)
After noticing the many old, but comfortable and substantial dwellings with which the remarkably verdant fields of Torver (which flow with milk and honey) are “bedropt,” you must take the road which the guide-post tells you leads to Ulverston—if you can’t read, ask at the blacksmith’s shop—and when you reach the eminence on which stands the old farm-house called Hem, or Hen Hall, turn round and take a good look at the Old Man, who is certainly seen to the greatest advantage from this point of view. ”

“ His propensity to rhyming was such, that many of his rhymes, as they are provincially called, are still repeated by the older inhabitants [Pg 174] of the neighbourhood. A few, and but a few of these rhymes, we shall here insert.
When he attended Ulverston market, as he generally did, he put up at the Dog, in Dalton Gate, then kept by Betty Woodburn and her husband, though now gone and forgotten. Audland, as he was called, was so much addicted to rhyming, that he did it on all occasions with various success ”

“ The House of Lords, to that active intellect, was as the retirement of some warrior of old into the cloisters of a convent. The gazette that chronicled the earldom of Ulverstone was the proclamation that Albert Trevanion lived no more for the world of public men. And, indeed, from that date his career vanished out of sight. Trevanion died,—the Earl of Ulverstone made no sign. ”

“ Trevanion was gazetted as Earl of Ulverstone,—a title that had been once in his family,—and had left the Administration, unable to encounter the fatigues of office. To an ordinary man the elevation to an earldom, passing over the lesser honors in the peerage, would have seemed no mean close to a political career ”

“ The two ridges of the Cartmel and Ulverstone Fells, the former clothed with wood and the latter with verdure, run up inland, and carry the eye back to the mountains, round the head of Coniston Water and Windermere. On the Ulverstone shore, to the left of the town, are the grounds of Conishead Priory, which adorn with their rich woods and lawns the gently-waving side of the hill; and the mouth of the Leven opens out to the Bay of Morecambe, the shores of which are visible to a great extent. ”

“ After this he obtained the living of Torver, a small Chapelry, under Ulverstone, situate a mile or two from Conistone down the west side of the lake; and shortly after that, he attained the great object of his very natural ambition—the ministry of this his native valley; married a wife with a fortune of forty pounds, and yet did not allow his strict habits of economy and industry to slacken. There was no labour too mean for him to engage in ”

“ All these people I found uninteresting and insignificant. Mr. Nilo Bong might call himself a Chinese, and his eyes were a little oblique, but his complexion proved him to be a European; Mr. Pound and Mr. Liverpool were huge men, but very unintelligent in appearance; Mrs. Pound was a small woman—very thin, with a sharp expression; Miss Jane and Miss Lucy Ulverstone were modest, well-mannered young women, who bowed politely.
There remained to be introduced only four more persons, two men, and two women.
The two men were strikingly alike, and both bore a singular resemblance to Mr. Oldham ”

“ But it is time you were taking leave of Cockley Beck, and as you are doing so, you may perceive at the foot of the heights to your left a number of rubbish heaps, the result of a mining speculation set a going and kept up by some spirited and very persevering gentlemen chiefly resident in Ulverstone. You now canter along a decent road through flat meadows where, if it be the season, the lads and lasses of the dale are busily engaged in securing the hay-crop and carrying it home, probably on horseback, for the old farmers here have not as yet begun to use carts for that purpose. ”

“ Train up Thy hardy Soldiers, Lord,
In all their Captain's steps to tread!
Or send them to proclaim Thy Word,
Thy Gospel through the world to spread,
Freely as they receive to give,
And preach The Death by which we live! ”

“ And I did pay thy gaming-losses; and thou gavest me Alftrude my dear wife, and half of the land she had as thy brother's widow. I did swear to let thee be in Ashford for ten years, and thou to give it up to me when ten years were run, or to repay me the sum of my lending in gold."
"Not so," said Ulwin. "I agreed with thee for Alftrude and half of her morning-gift from Winge. Why should she take more with her when she went from us to wed a needy foreigner?" ”

“ I find Lord Ulswater my rival. I am willing to compare my pretensions to his. I acknowledge that he has titles which I have not; that he has wealth, to which mine is but competence: but titles and wealth, as the means of happiness, are to be referred to your daughter, to none else. You have only, in an alliance with me, to consider my character and my lineage: the latter flows from blood as pure as that which warms the veins of my rival; the former stands already upon an eminence to which Lord Ulswater in his loftiest visions could never aspire. ”

“ I have set up a mill there, with the Abbot's licence."
"Not thine, Richard the Scrob. I am Turstin of Wigmore's man for Ashford, and I may not go with it to any other lord; [15] and Turstin is wishful to uphold his right. As for thy mill ... well, thou hast made it, and there will be the tolls for me."
"If there be any flaw in our dealings, then is it matter for the moot."
"Now, understand me, thou!" shouted Ulwin, with a pompous gesture of the arms and an outward thrust of his swollen underlip. "That which thou hast tricked of me I will have again, yea, this day and this hour! ”

“ They gave up their warlike life, and became an agricultural people. And the colony increased through the immigration of others of their own people. For it seems that though Ulfila had left, the influence of his preaching did not cease, and others embraced Christianity, and as the persecutions continued these determined to join Ulfila, so it came about that through the efforts of this one man large numbers were taught the truths of the Bible. He translated the Bible into the lan [Pg 122] guage of the Goths. This was an immense labor, for he was obliged to invent a new alphabet. ”

“ I now, my dear Linden, leave you to your fate. For my part, though I own Lord Ulswater is a lord whom ladies in love with the et ceteras of married pomp might well desire, yet I do think it would be no difficult matter for you to eclipse him. I cannot, it is true, advise you to run away with Lady Flora. Gentlemen don't run away with the daughters of gentlemen; but, without running away, you may win your betrothed and Lord Ulswater's intended. ”

“ Ulrich turned round. Pure joy, succeeded the next moment by horror, lit up his emaciated features.
"You at Uhlenfelde?" he gasped.
"How do you do, little girl?" cried Leo, forcing himself into an assumption of his old genial manner. "Don't let your eyes quite start out of your head. You can set the dogs on me to chase me out of the yard if I am not welcome." ”

“ Alf knew it, and in revenge, ceased to attend chapel.
Mr. Pigott, with an unerring eye for the defaulters of his flock, marked his absence and tackled the lost sheep on the subject.
"You've given up God then!" he said, fierce and frowning.
"There ain't none," answered Alf, as brief and brutal. "Where there's no justice, there can't be no God." His little eyes sparkled dreadfully. "Look at young Albert Hewson. He went through the shops with me. Is he as good an engineer as me?—Can he strip an engine same as me?—Can he turn to the thousandth part of an inch?—Ask the chaps in the yard. ”

“ Alftrude continued, drawing a fold of periwinkle blue from beneath her winter wrapping. "True, it is not of my weaving; but mine own corn did I sell to buy the cloth. I believe they grudge me my mother's own jewels! Ulwin, and Alward, and Ednoth, and their mother, and the wives of the three. There would be no pleasure for any but Ulwin, if he could have his way: others must scrape and lack for him. A bad husbandman, too, is Ulwin. Men will give him but little for his crops and cattle. ”

“ Nevertheless, Ulpian, I would sooner see you in bondage to a pair of white hands and hazel eyes,—would rather know that like all your race you were utterly humbugged—hoodwinked—by some fair-browed belle, whose low voice rippled over pouting pink lips, than have you live always alone, a confirmed old bachelor. ”

“ You are obliged to know that you are not one of his favorites, like that sweet-tempered Muriel, to whom he seems so warmly attached; and it is all your own fault, for he was disposed to like you when he first came home. Ulpian loves quiet and amiable people, who are never rude and snappish; and it appears to me that you are trying to see how hateful and spiteful you can be. ”

“ To which Udall replied, “It is for the queen to hear all things when the life of any of her subjects is in question.” The criminal felt what was just more than his judges; and yet the judge, though to be reprobated for his mode, calling so learned a man “Sirrah!” was right in the thing, when he declared that “you would bring the queen and the crown under your girdles.” It is remarkable that Udall repeatedly employed that expression which Algernon Sidney left as his last legacy to the people, when he told them he was about to die for “that Old Cause in which I was from my youth engaged.” ”

“ Maia. There, you hear, Rubek!
Ulfheim. No, much better come up with me to the mountains—away, clean away, from the trail and taint of men. You can’t think what that means for me. But such a little lady——
[He stops.
[The Sister of Mercy comes out of the pavilion and goes into the hotel.
Ulfheim. [Following her with his eyes.] Just look at her, do! That night-crow there!—Who is it that’s to be buried?
Professor Rubek. I have not heard of any one——
Ulfheim. ”

“ Ulph was not covetous; he was an honest fellow, who would not upon any account have made money out of the baron’s presents. He was good-hearted too, and, whenever he could keep a friend with him, he invited him in a mysterious manner to share his precious bottles; drinking alone is sad, and he was only too happy to be able to enjoy them in company. But it was so well established that the chateau was haunted, not by a bear, as Nils imagined, but by an unhappy ghost, that poor Ulph could not persuade a single boon companion to stop with him a moment after sunset. ”

“ The dawn-light found an echo on Uther's face. He came that morning the ransomer, the champion, a King indeed; Spring bursting the thongs of Winter; Day thrusting back the Night. His manhood smote in him like the deep-throated cry of a great bell, voluminous and solemn. The towers on the cliff were haloed with magic hues. Life, glory, joy, lay locked in the grey stone walls. ”

“ God will bless and reward you, I truly believe; for He only can reward such a deed as the one you are about to do."
"I do not want any reward," answered Ursula simply; "I only want to do what is right. Suppose it were somebody very dear to me, it would be no sacrifice; and Mrs. Varden is very near and dear to somebody—to her poor young husband. I saw him as he went off the vessel."
"Poor fellow—yes. I fear——" but the Captain pulled up short, and kept the fear to himself. Ursula moved away towards her own cabin. ”