wave gayly in the breeze, a challenge to any Pan who may be haunting these woods and shores. Poets instead of river gods answered the lovely lake's challenge, and "beauty born of murmuring sound" entered into their souls, for from here and from Grasmere, where Coleridge and Southey often joined Wordsworth in his walks, there issued some of the sweetest of our English lyrics.

Overlooking Rydal Water and under the shade of a friendly tree is "Wordsworth's Seat," a huge boulder with hospitably shelving sides. Here we may fancy the poet sitting by the hour drawing inspiration from the beauty of the lake and the picturesque grandeur of Loughrigg rising above it.

We passed by Grasmere's fair lake and vale and on to Helm Crag, at whose top a stone wall defines the boundary between Westmoreland and Cumberland, and a heap of stones marks the grave of Dunmail, the last of the Kings of Cumbria. A little way beyond is Thirlmere with Helvellyn towering to a height of over three thousand feet, a vast altitude for England! Here we had a superb view of this great mountain's jagged peaks, and of the Red Cove Crag from which poor Charles Gough fell to his death while climbing these hills.

When Sir Walter Scott came here, he was so deeply impressed by the story of the finding of young Gough's body, months afterwards, his faithful little terrier with her litter of young puppies beside her master, that he wrote a poem on the spot. It was said, by some of the dale folk, that the little watcher had "eat grass, but others thought that she had lived upon the carrion mutton that is always to be found among these fellside precipices and in the mountain ghylls. In any case, it was proved to everyone's satisfaction that she did not eat her dead master. Although we were greatly touched by this story of canine faithfulness, we were not moved to poetry like Walter Scott or Thomas Wilkinson. The latter's description of the little dog's remarkable three months' vigil is simpler and better, to my thinking, than Sir Walter Scott's:

"And when the rosy dawn

On Swirrel's rocks and Striden's horrors shone,
To her dead lord the faithful servant crept,
Pull'd his damp robe, and wondered why he slept."

We passed by the Castle Rock of St. John, the scene of Scott's Bridal of Triermain, and so on to Castle Rigg, from whose brow a noble panorama of the vale of Keswick is to be had, with Derwentwater and Brassenthwaite shining

below, and Skiddaw and Blacathara towering above them.

It did not seem worth while to go out of our way to see "how the waters came down at Lodore," because we were told that very little water was coming down at present. Instead, we went to Greta Hall, Southey's home for forty years, and then out to see the Druid Circle, or whatever it may be, with its thirtyeight stones, some of them quite high. From this eminence, and across Naddle Fell, is the little church of St. John in the Vale, said to be the highest site of any church in England. The churchyard is reverently and pathetically dedicated "To the glory of God and the last long sleep of the Dalesmen."

Our day of coaching was altogether delightful, but we came back to the shores of Windermere as to a home, and feel that we can say of this vale, with the poet who wrote of it so tenderly:

"Dear valley, having in thy face a smile,
Though peaceful, full of gladness."

We have moved over to Ambleside in order to be within walking distance of the Wordsworth haunts, and as if to be quite in keeping with the associations of the place we are lodged