NOTES TO "THE VALE OF SAINT JOHN." Near the village of Threlkeld, the road from Keswick to Penrith, branching off on the right, discloses obliquely to the view, the Vale of St. John. The well known description of this beautiful dell by Mr. Hutchinson, who visited it in the year 1773, conferred upon it a reputation which was greatly increased when the genius of Scott made it the scene of his tale of enchantment "The Bridal of Triermain." The interest which it derives from its traditional connection with the wiles of Merlin, whose magic fortress continues to attract and elude the gaze of the traveller, is well given in the words of the former writer. "We now gained a view of the Vale of St. John's, a very narrow dell, hemmed in by mountains, through which a small brook makes many meanderings, washing little enclosures of grass ground, which stretch up the risings of the hills. In the widest part of the dale you are struck with the appearance of an ancient ruined castle, which seems to stand upon the summit of a little mount, the mountains around forming an amphitheatre. This massive bulwark shews a front of various towers, and makes an awful, rude, and Gothic appearance, with its lofty turrets and rugged battlements: we traced the galleries, the bending arches, the buttresses. The greatest antiquity stands characterized in its architecture; the inhabitants near it assert it is an antidiluvian structure. "The traveller's curiosity is roused, and he prepares to make a nearer approach, when that curiosity is put upon the rack, by his being assured that, if he advances, certain genii, who govern the place, by virtue of their supernatural arts and necromancy will strip it of all its beauties, and by enchantment transform the magic walls. The vale seems adapted for the habitation of such beings; its gloomy recesses and retirements look like the haunts of evil spirits. There was no delusion in the report; we were soon convinced of its truth; for this piece of antiquity, so venerable and noble in its aspect, as we drew near, changed its figure, and proved no other than a shaken massive pile of rocks, which stand in the midst of this little vale, disunited from the adjoining mountains, and have so much the real form and resemblance of a castle, that they bear the name of _The Castle Rocks of St. John's_." The more familiar appellation of this rocky pile among the dalesmen is _Green Crag_. The approach into the valley from Threlkeld displays it in the most poetical point of view, and under some states of atmosphere it requires no stretch of the imagination to transform its grey perpendicular masses into an impregnable castle, whose walls and turrets waving with ivy and other parasitical plants, form the prison of the immortal Merlin.