You wend your way along a very uneven path on the hill-side to the west of Leverswater, and when you arrive at a point about opposite to that on which you approached it, and nearly under a precipice called Oukrigg (Wool-crag?) you take the very steep ascent to your left, and follow up a small water-course, until you observe more on your left a fine dell dished, as it were, out of the hill-side, and thickly dotted with sheep. It is called the Gillcove, because, from time immemorial, the sheep belonging to a farm in the village called the Gill (or Ghyll), have been depastured upon it. You traverse this same cove, and rise over the shoulder of Brimfell, regularly gaining upon the mountain; but the ascent becomes dismally laborious here, so much so, that you are fain to lie down to recover breath, and whilst doing so, what say you to a little familiar chat with the Old Man himself?—Listen! Old Man! Old Man!!—Your sides are _brant_, And dreadfully hard to climb; My strength fails fast, and my breath is scant, So I'll e'en rest here and rhyme. “Yea, my slopes are steep and my dells are deep, And my broad bald brow is high, And you'll ne'er, should you rhyme till the limit of time, Find worthier theme than I! “My summit I shroud in the weltering cloud, And I laugh at the tempest’s din; I am girdled about with stout rock without, And I've countless wealth within. “My silence is broke by the raven’s croak, And the bark of the mountain fox; And mine echoes awake to the brown glead’s shriek, As he floats past my hoary rocks.” Old Man! Old Man! many an age Has glided away while you've stood, And much has been graven on history’s page, Since your summit was laved by the flood. “Yea, nations are dead and centuries fled, Whilst here, like a trusty guard, O'er mine own sweet vale, braving thunder and gale, I have held close watch and ward. “And many a change, portentous and strange, Hath swept o'er this change-loving earth; Yet here do I stand, and I frown o'er the land With the aspect I wore at my birth.” [Sidenote: THE PINNACLE.] There! you perceive Shakspere is correct as ever when he says we may find sermons in stones, and I trust you will profit by the Old Man’s homily. Resuming your clamber, you, by and bye, come out upon the high narrow ridge connecting the Old Man with the fells behind him. It is now all plane sailing, and you soon arrive at the pinnacle, or pillar, or pile of stones upon the mountain’s “very topmost towering height,” which is, according to the best authority, 2,632 feet above the sea. [Sidenote: THE OLD MAN’S GODFATHERS.]