And so with a host of others, to whom the hills “beetle,” the rocks “frown savagely,” the sea “roars like a devouring monster.” And all the while, you know, they don’t do anything of the kind. Instead, the hills slant away beautifully up skyward, the rocks, draped with ivy and moss and studded with ferns, look benignant, and the sea and the Lyn together still the senses with their combined drowsy murmur, as you sit looking alternately down upon the harbour or up at the wooded heights from that finest of vantage points, the “Tors” terrace, after dinner, when the lights in the village and those of the hillside villas twinkle in the twilight, like jewels. The poetry of the scene appeals to all, except perhaps Miss Marie Corelli, who, in the “Mighty Atom,” does not appear to approve of it. This, of course, is very discouraging, but the inhabitants are endeavouring to bear up; apparently with a considerable measure of success. “How soothing the sound of rushing water,” observed a charming young lady, impressed with the scene. I agreed, but could not help remarking that there were exceptions. “My dear young lady,” said I, noticing the incredulous lift of her eyebrow’s, “you do not know the feelings of a householder whose water-pipes have burst in a rapid thaw. Rushing water, as it pours out of the bath-room, down the front stairs, does not soothe _him_.” The voice of the Lyn has, however, suggested less prosaic thoughts, and has set many a minor poet, and many minimus poets, scribbling in the hotel “visitors’” books. Nay, no less a person than the Reverend William Henry Havergal, staying at the Lyndale Hotel, in September 1849, waking in the night and listening to that voice, harmonised it in the following chant which he inscribed in the book then kept at that establishment:-- [Illustration] It is a beautiful anthem-like fragment, “like the sound of a great ‘Amen,’” and brings thoughts of cathedral choirs and deep-toned organs. Havergal, of course, as a writer of devotional music, had a mind by long use attuned to finding such a motive; but I am not sure that another composer, with a bent towards secular music of a sprightly, light-opera kind, might not, lying wakeful here, find a suggestion for his own art in these untutored sharps and trebles. The Lyn in its final series of falls in the semi-private grounds of Glen Lyn, at the rear of the Lyndale Hotel, sounds a deeper note, and comes splashing down with a roar by fern-clad rocky walls and between a scatter of great boulders. A rustic bridge looks down upon the foaming water, flecked with sunlight coming in patches of gold through the overarching foliage.