KELBURNE CASTLE 



AYRSHIRE 



N all the west no fairer prospect can be 

 had than is commanded by one stand- 

 ing above the pretty little watering 

 place of Fairlie on the Firth of Clyde. 



I have studied it at all seasons and 



in all moods of weather : beshrew me if I can tell 

 which becomes it best a clear winter day, when 

 the fantastic fairyland of Arran gleams snow-clad 

 beyond the blue-waters in almost unreal splendour 

 a summer morning, when the sea lies pearly calm 

 and the eastern rays reveal every glen and corrie, 

 every shattered peak and shadowed cliff in the brother- 

 hood of Goat Fell, or again in September, when that 

 outline whereof the eye never wearies is cast in purple, 

 clear-cut silhouette against the saffron west, while 

 the dusky isles of Cumbrae and Bute fill in the quiet 

 middle distance. In all its aspects it is a perfect 

 landscape, and although the lord who built his tower 

 in the sixteenth century on the brink of Kelburne 

 Glen, may have had in view strategic rather than 

 aesthetic considerations, it happened here, as it has 

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