'Glorious!' Nelly Sarratt stood lost in the beauty of the spectacle commanded by Sir William Farrell's cottage.

It was placed in a by-road on the western side of Loughrigg, that smallest of real mountains, beloved of poets and wanderers.

The ground dropped sharply below it to a small lake or tarn, its green banks fringed with wood, while on the further side the purple crag and noble head of Wetherlam rose out of sunlit mist,--thereby indefinitely heightened--into a pearl and azure sky.

To the north also, a splendid wilderness of fells, near and far; with the Pikes and Bowfell leading the host.

White mists--radiant mists--perpetually changing, made a magic interweaving of fell with fell, of mountain with sky.