"Matlock Bath," we read, "is a most delightful place"; but after an enthusiastic description of High Tor, John reacts into bathos with a minute description of wetting their shoes in a puddle.

The cavern with a Bengal light was fairyland to him, and among the minerals he was quite at home.
Then they hurried north to Windermere.

Once at Lowwood, the excitement thickens, with storms and rainbows, mountains and waterfalls, boats on the lake and coaching on the steep roads.

This journey through Lakeland is described in the galloping anapaests of the "Iteriad," which was simply the prose journal versified on his return, one of the few enterprises of the sort which were really completed.
To readers who know the country it is interesting as giving a detailed account in the days when this "nook of English ground" was "secure from rash assault." One learns that, even then, there were jarring sights at Bowness Bay and along Derwentwater shore, elements unkind and bills exorbitant.

Coniston especially was dreary with rain, and its inn--the old Waterhead, now destroyed--extravagantly dear; "_but_," says John, with his eye for mineral specimens, "it contains several rich coppermines." An interesting touch is the hero-worship with which they went reverently to peep at Southey and Wordsworth in church; too humble to dream of an introduction, and too polite to besiege the poets in their homes, but independent enough to form their own opinions on the personality of the heroes.