Leaving the village of Whalley at the upper end, we pass beneath the viaduct, and continue along a pleasant rural high road that winds away to the right in sweetest solitude. The tall hedgerows are fresh with their summer foliage, and fragrant with the odours of the honeysuckle, the sweetbriar, and the wealth of floral beauty that spreads around. Now and then we get a glimpse of the Calder, flowing “with liquid lapse serene,” here coming out of the verdant shade, and there going into it again, and murmuring its admiration of the scene in a perpetual song of joyousness. Presently the trees thicken, and through the openings we look over a country serenely pastoral in its character, with its wooded bluffs, its level holms, and wide-spreading pastures, through which the Cold springs run To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass. Behind us rises Whalley Nab, with the old abbey nestling at its foot; the wooded heights above Wiswall, Billinge Hill, and the bleak, cloud-mottled heights of the majestic Pendle. In mid-distance the broken keep of Clitheroe Castle gleams in the mellow light, and just below the tower of Clitheroe Church may be discerned. Sweeping round towards the north, Waddington Fell, Bleasdale Moor, and the wooded heights of Bowland Forest come in view; and, far beyond, the shadowy peaks of Pennygent and Ingleborough, reminding us of the old saw— Pendle Hill and Pennygent and Little Ingleborough, Are three such hills as you’ll not find by searching England thorough. Nearer we see the woods about Whitewell, a spot dear to every lover of the gentle craft, and to the artist a very storehouse of scenic beauty; the opening shows where the Hodder flows down to add its tributary to the Ribble; further westward we have the huge form of Longridge Fell stretching across the landscape, with Kemple End, and the wooded eminence rising from its lowest spur, on which stands the stately hall of Stonyhurst. A little more than half an hour’s walking brings us to Mitton, a pleasant little rural hamlet occupying a narrow tapering strip of land that runs in between the two rivers, the Hodder and the Ribble, and very near the point where the latter is joined by the Calder. As the old distich reminds us— The Hodder, the Calder, the Ribble and rain All meet in a point on Mitton’s domain.