It is glorious, indeed, on an early spring morning to be perched, let us say, on one of the lower shoulders of Helvellyn, with the joyous crash of hounds upon a warming scent echoing from cliff to cliff. [Illustration: ULLSWATER] But let us turn to gentler themes, noting for a moment Stybarrow, the foot of which is the subject of our artist's skill. There is very little of the Border foray tradition in the heart of the Lake country. It was obviously unprofitable as well as risky to the aggressor. But a body of Scots did once, at least, make a dash on Patterdale and on Stybarrow, which is in a sense its gateway, and met their fate. If the eastern shore of the upper half of Ullswater is inspiring from its solitary grandeur of overhanging mountain, its feathered cliffs and promontories, its indented rocky coves, its western shore holds one's affections by its gentler and more sylvan beauties. For after the picturesque confusion of mossy crag and forest glade around Stybarrow, beneath which the lake lies deep and dark, the two large demesnes--"chases" would best describe them--of Glencoin and Gowbarrow slope gently down from the back-lying mountains to the curving shore. Here are pleasant silvery strands overhung with tall sycamores and oaks; there are rocky shores fringed with hazel and alder, where the crystal waters of this most pellucid of large lakes breaks sonorously when a gale is blowing. The little becks come tumbling in too over the sloping meadows from the fells--that of Glencoin of familiar name, and that of Aira of greater fame for its waterfall, whose hoarse voice can be heard on still evenings on the lake, and for the legend embodied in Wordsworth's well-known poem. Here, too, behind the long grassy promontory with pebbly shore that roughly marks the entry to this upper and more beautiful four miles of lake, is Lyulph's tower. Not a very ancient fabric, to be sure, but marking the site of that shadowy keep where dwelt the sleep-walking, love-lorn maiden, who perished in the pool below Aira Force in the arms of her errant knight, as he arrived only just in time to drag her expiring to the shore. List ye who pass by Lyulph's tower At eve how softly then Doth Aira Force, that torrent hoarse, Speak from the woody glen. BASSENTHWAITE AND DERWENTWATER What was the great Parnassus' self to thee Mount Skiddaw? In his natural sovereignty Our British hill is fairer far; he shrouds His double front among Atlantic clouds, And pours forth streams more sweet than Castally. --_Wordsworth._