LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
DERWENTWATER PRESERVATION. THE SCHEME OF THE NATIONAL TRUST.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You announced some weeks ago that an opportunity had occurred for purchasing for the public some wooded land on the slope forming the western shore of Derwentwater. The National Trust has now secured more than half the money, and donations are daily coming in; but the time during which the option of purchase is open is quickly passing, and the amount still to be collected is very large,— £3,460. London is emptying fast. May I through your columns ask those who are going, or have gone, to mountain, lake, and moor for their own holiday to send some contribu- tion towards securing for others this lovely slope of mountain, meadow, and wood, that it may be for ever open freely to all who need rest and who care for views of lake and hill and sky? We do not plead for it as we might for help in famine or pestilence, but there is a hunger of the soul and mind and heart as well as of the body; and it is for ever true that to make a healthy life one must have rest as well as work. We do not live by bread alone; the Sunday rest is as necessary to man as the weekly toil. We all feel the need, and that increasingly, of fair places where the flowers grow and there is sight of sky and hill. We are a rich nation, and surely we should each do what in us lies to secure places such as this for the large number of those who yearly escape from our towns to the country, and who do not visit those possess. ing parks and grounds, and who yearly find accessible ground more built over and enclosed. But more than this, the Lake District is an inheritance of our nation, fair and still, and haunted by memories of our great men. Whoever has learnt from Ruskin and Wordsworth should try to preserve for their countrymen some of the beauties which moulded and taught them to be what they were. This land, too, is a great living picture, and from it one beholds other great pictures. One may see Skiddaw rise against the sky, and the mists gather blue in the recesses of Borrowdale, hear the wavelets break against the shore, watch the squirrel at his play, and see the masses of tall foxgloves on the hillside, while treading thewinding wood paths, or the mountain meadow on the side of Catbells. Are we to keep this for our people or not? It depends upon us each and all. Will you each in your measure help P We have committees in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, and Keswick, the working men are subscribing, we are issuing cards to those who will collect shillings, we have made the scheme known in the hotels and banks in the district, we have written to America, ever ready as she is to unite with us in apprecia- tion of these common inheritances of our race. We have received £3,540 in donations varying from 5s. to £500, but the amount to raise is large, the time is short ; committees and notices and letters to papers do not purchase land ; it is you, the potential donors, with whom it rests whether this year a mile of the shore of Derwentwater is saved as a pos- session for English people or not. I doubt whether much of the money we this year spend will do so deep and lasting good as that which forms our share of the mile of mountain meadow slope on Derwentwater.—I am, Sir, &c., [We endorse every line and every word of Miss Hill's appeal.—En. Spectator.]
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