The visitors
arrived there in a "gorgeous sunset" (the only one that Lamb saw during
his stay in the country), and thought that they had got "into fairy-land."
"We entered Coleridge's study" (he writes to Manning, shortly afterwards)
"just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark. Such an impression I
never received from objects of sight, nor do I suppose I ever can again.
Glorious creatures, Skiddaw, &c. I shall never forget how ye lay about
that night, like an intrenchment; gone to bed, as it seemed, for the
night."
They went to Coleridge's house, in which "he had a large, antique, ill-
shaped room, with an old organ, never played upon, an Aeolian harp, and
shelves of scattered folios," and remained there three weeks, visiting
Wordsworth's cottage, he himself being absent, and meeting the Clarksons
("good, hospitable people"). They tarried there one night, and met Lloyd.
They clambered up to the top of Skiddaw, "and went to Grassmere,
Ambleside, Ullswater, and over the middle of Helvellyn." Coleridge then
dwelt upon a small hill by the side of Keswick, quite "enveloped on all
sides by a net of mountains." On his return to London, Lamb wrote to his
late host, saying, "I feel I shall remember your mountains to the last day
of my life.
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