Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/10

a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with shale, or a few wild blossoms of St. John's vale lost to the coronal of English Spring? Little, to any one; and—let me say this, at least, in the outset of all saying—nothing, to me. No one need charge me with selfishness in any word, or action, for defence of these mossy hills. I do not move, with such small activity as I have yet shown in the business, because I live at Coniston, (where no sound of the iron wheels by Dunmail Raise can reach me,)—nor because I can find no other place to remember Wordsworth by, than the daffodil margin of his little Rydal marsh. What thoughts and work are yet before me, such as he taught, must be independent of any narrow associations. All my own dear mountain grounds, and treasure-cities, Chamouni, Interlachen, Lucerne, Geneva, Venice, are long ago destroyed by the European populace; and now, for my own part, I don't care what more they do; they may drain Loch Katrine, drink Loch Lomond, and blow all Wales and Cumberland into a heap of slate shingle; the world is wide enough yet to find me some refuge during the days appointed for me to stay in it. But it is no less my duty, in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still, if I had it now to learn,—it is my duty to plead with