States within a State--and their peculiar relation to England, are worthy of curious scrutiny and close comparative study. On the present occasion we propose to make our way from Peel to Ramsey by neither of the two alternatives that have briefly been sketched above. We propose, on the contrary, to take a composite route--partly through the lowland, but mostly over hill--which will introduce us alike to Kirkmichael, and Bishop's Court beyond it, and carry us over the top of Snaefell--provided always that it be autumn, spring, or winter, and that the electric tramway is not running. [Illustration: A BREEZY MORNING AT POINT OF AYRE. The northern extremity of the Isle of Man with its lighthouse.] From Peel to Kirkmichael we either follow the highroad, which is never very far from the sea, or else take the roundabout route by Tynwald Hill and Glen Helen. Kirkmichael itself is a hard-featured little village stretching in a single, long street along the main road to Ramsey, and distant half a mile from the sea. Luckily, so far, it has escaped the blight of "development," and has plenty of character and local Manx colour. The church was rebuilt in 1835--no need to state in what style--but a fragment of its predecessor remains on the east of the graveyard. Near this is the tomb of Bishop Thomas Wilson (d. 1755), with an inscription by his son, "Who in obedience to the express Commands of his worthy Father, Declines giving him the Character He so justly Deserved. Let this island speak the Rest." There is a portrait of Bishop Wilson--no doubt sufficiently fanciful--in Mr. Hall Caine's _Deemster_, where he appears as the good native Bishop. Wilson, however, was really a Cheshireman, having been born at Burton-in-Wirral in 1663; and was educated as a sizar at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was a contemporary of the saturnine Jonathan Swift. In 1692 he was appointed domestic chaplain to the ninth Earl of Derby, and tutor to his son, which determined the whole after course of his life. The Stanleys at this time were no longer "Kings of Man," but they still possessed authority almost regal. "In the year 1393 the Earl of Salisbury sold to Sir William le Scroop, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire, the Isle of Man, with the title of King, and the right of being crowned with a golden crown." In 1406, after some intermediate dealings with which we need not here concern ourselves, the island (still carrying with it, no doubt, the right to "the golden round") passed to Sir John Stanley, who died in 1414; and with the Stanleys it continued till it passed by the marriage of an heiress to the Atholl Murrays in 1736. The regal title, however, had been dropped by the second Earl of Derby (d. 1521), "as he preferred being a great lord to being a petty King." The famous island arms (Gules three legs in armour embossed and conjoined at the thighs proper, spurred and garnished, or) still figure