The place is without any dampness, and would afford an habitation not
uncomfortable. There were from space to space seats in the rock. Though
it wants water, it excels Dovedale by the extent of its prospects, the
awfulness of its shades, the horrors of its precipices, the verdure of
its hollows, and the loftiness of its rocks: the ideas which it forces
upon the mind are, the sublime, the dreadful, and the vast. Above is
inaccessible altitude, below is horrible profundity. But it excels the
garden of Ilam only in extent.
Ilam has grandeur, tempered with softness; the walker congratulates his
own arrival at the place, and is grieved to think that he must ever
leave it. As he looks up to the rocks, his thoughts are elevated; as he
turns his eyes on the vallies, he is composed and soothed.
He that mounts the precipices at Hawkestone, wonders how he came
thither, and doubts how he shall return. His walk is an adventure, and
his departure an escape. He has not the tranquillity, but the horror, of
solitude; a kind of turbulent pleasure, between fright and admiration.
Ilam is the fit abode of pastoral virtue, and might properly diffuse its
shades over Nymphs and Swains. Hawkestone can have no fitter inhabitants
than giants of mighty bone and bold emprise[1185]; men of lawless
courage and heroic violence. Hawkestone should be described by Milton,
and Ilam by Parnel.
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