People do not realise how fair a view of the whole Skiddaw range is presented to them as they climb that pass, or they would climb it oftener. The higher one climbs, the higher does Skiddaw appear, and deep-bosomed mountain-side in all its massy grandeur of emerald green and lilac shade in spring, of puce and burnished bronze in autumn, {169} impresses one with its calm and restfulness. The cloud, sure sign of fine weather, rests upon its utmost peak to-day, and irresistibly recalls the lines of Wordsworth's sonnet: 'Veiling itself in mid-Atlantic clouds To pour forth streams more sweet than Castaly,' while the pleasant farms with the far-off interchange of happy cock-crowing, glitter at our feet, and, like an arm of some great ocean-loch, the white waters of Bassenthwaite come round the precipice of Barf, and sweep out of the shadow of Wythop woods into the September sunshine. On our left rises Grasmoor, haunt of the dottrel, and Hobcarton Crag, beloved of rare mountain flowers. So we crest the long slope and drop down into Lorton, with the hill-sides on our right, golden with gorse against the westering sun. Turning sharply to the left as soon as the village is reached, we pass a kind of pleasant rural street, if that may be called a street which has houses only on the one side of it, and just as we emerge into the country again, find ourself at a spot where the road forks, a portion of it going over a beck bridge into a farm enclosure by a picturesque old water-mill and byre, and a portion of it,--the main road {170} to Loweswater,--bending sharply to the right to go across the valley by the north side of the stream, which is here hidden from view by a long barn building. If we pause at this point we cannot help being struck by the sombre mass of a great yew-tree standing in a pleasant meadow close to the beck, where at one time there was doubtless a ford. This is what Wordsworth described as 'A yew-tree, Pride of Lorton Vale, Which to this day stands single, in the midst Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore, Not loth to furnish weapons for the bands Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea And drew their sounding bows at Azincour, Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers. Of vast circumference and gloom profound This solitary tree!--a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed.' It is not to-day the noble tree it was when Fox was here, and the prophecy of the poet was only a few years since like to have been made utterly vain. For its form and aspect was so magnificent that its owner sold it to a Lorton wood merchant, and it was just about to be cut down when some memory of Fox's {171} sermon awoke in the breast of a faithful member of the Society of Friends in the neighbourhood, and the wood merchant good-naturedly went off his bargain.