OVER COLD FELL. 171 



jections and recesses of the ruins, and how the 

 golden moon hangs over the eastern mass of tree 

 tops, ready to take her turn in disclosing the 

 beauties of the monastic retreat. 



The^A^bey is carefully preserved, and liberally 

 laid open to strangers by Captain Irwin. It is no 

 fault of his that his house, a plain substantial 

 modern dwelling, stands too near the ruins. He 

 did not build it : so there is nothing personal in 

 the natural wish of strangers that it stood some- 

 where else. 



At the gate the carriage is waiting, and it takes 

 the cross road, almost opposite the gate, up to Cold 

 Fell. The drive over that fell is com- 

 monly called dreary; and it is so in 

 bad weather : but it has its charms. The sea-view 

 is fine, — all flecked with cloud-shadows as with 

 islands : and so too is the wide down sprinkled 

 with sheep, that look as ragged as terriers, after 

 tearing their fleeces with the furze and brambles 

 with which the swelling slopes are embossed. In a 

 hollow, at rare intervals, stands a farmhouse under 

 the ordinary sycamore canopy ; and far away, be- 

 tween the slopes of the down below, the soil is cut 

 up into fields, with woods hanging above. At the 

 mouth of the vale, between it and the coast, stands 

 Egremont, a little town of 1,500 inhabitants or so, 

 and which certainly looks very pretty from the 

 uplands ; — and cheerful too, in spite of its Roman 

 name, — {'' the Mount of Sorrow.'^) It is distin- 

 guished by Roman traditions. It was at the gate- 

 way of Egremont Castle that the horn was hung, 

 in crusading days, which was twice blown by the 

 gallant Sir Eustace de Lacy. As the Cumber- 



