At Appleby we enter the vale of the Eden, and bounding the western horizon we catch the first glimpse of the blue hills in whose deep depressions lie the English lakes. Appleby has a comfortable hotel, where we pause for lunch, and the appearance of the town is better and more prosperous than those we have recently passed. The square tower of the castle rises from an adjacent height and the church presents the remarkable spectacle of a hair dresser's rooms occupying a portion of the ancient cloisters which open on the market place. There is no finer highway in the north of England than the Carlisle road through Penrith. It pursues nearly if not quite the course of the old Roman road following the lowlands along the river--a broad white way which leads through a pleasant succession of fields and villages. We pass many ancient landmarks--on the left Brougham Castle, a red sandstone ruin splashed with ivy and creepers, and farther on to the right, Eden Hall, made famous by the ballad of Uhland. Penrith is a busy town of ten thousand or more, seemingly improved since our visit of four years before, when it had no electric light plant. It is the starting-point for most Lake District excursions, whether by rail or coach. The railway follows the wagon road quite closely to Keswick and from thence one must have some other conveyance than rail to explore the region. And is it not well enough, for what impression worth while could one gain of Lakeland from a railway car? From Keswick we turn southward over the hills, from whose summits the landscape--every hill and vale redolent with music and memories of the "Lakers"--stretches away beneath us, the lakes set in the valleys like great flashing gems. How familiar the odd names have been made by the poets of Lakeland! Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Borrowdale, Langdale Pikes and Fells, Rydal, Grasmere, and a hundred others--all call to mind the stanzas of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Our road sweeps up and down the hills along the sinuous shores of Thirlmere, certainly one of the most picturesque of the bright sisterhood of English lakes, but which now serves the very practical purpose of a source of water-supply for the city of Manchester, which acquired it by purchase. This transaction has aroused the indignation of a modern lake poet who falls little short of the best traditions of his illustrious predecessors and he makes vigorous protest against the cities whose "million-throated thirst" menaces the "sacred meres" of Lakeland. But the Manchester ownership--prosaic as it may be--has not detracted from the beauty of Thirlmere and many nuisances that once encumbered its shores have been abated.