“A score of fires
   From height and hill and cliff were seen;
   Each with warlike tidings fraught,
   Each from each the signal caught,
   Each after each they glanced to sight
   As stars arise upon the night.”

The antiquities in the neighbourhood are numerous and interesting; and the prospects from the heights are extensive and picturesque.  Ulleswater, Helvellyn, Skiddaw, Saddleback, some of the Yorkshire hills, and Carlisle Cathedral can be distinctly seen on a clear day.  Brougham castle is situated one mile and three-quarters from Penrith.  It was one of the strongholds of the great Barons of the Borders in the feudal times.  At present it is in a very decayed state, but still is majestic in its ruins.  Its earliest owner was John de Veteripont, from whose family it passed by marriage into the hands of the Cliffords and Tuftons successively, and it is now the property of Sir John Tufton.  Tradition records, but on what authority we know not, that Sir Philip Sidney wrote part of his “Arcadia” at this baronial mansion.  Wordsworth’s “Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle” is one of his noblest lyrical effusions.  “The Countess’s Pillar,” a short distance beyond the castle, was erected in 1656 by Lady Anne Clifford, as “a memorial of her last parting at that place with her good and pious mother, Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland, the 2nd of April, 1616, in memory whereof she has left the annuity of 4 pounds, to be distributed to the poor, within the parish of Brougham, every 2nd day of April for ever, upon a stone hereby.  Laus Deo.”  This was the Lady Anne Clifford of whom it was said by the facetious Dr. Donne, that she could “discourse of all things, from predestination to slea silk.”  Her well-known answer, returned to a ministerial application as to the representation of Appleby, shows the spirit and decision of the woman:—­“I have been bullied by an usurper (the Protector Cromwell), I have been neglected by a Court, but I’ll not be dictated to by a subject—­your man shan’t stand!”

About two miles from Penrith is the curious antique relic called Arthur’s Round Table, already referred to.  It is a circular area above twenty yards in diameter, surrounded by a fosse and mound.  Six miles north-east of Penrith are the ancient remains, Long Meg and her Daughters.  DACRE castle is situated five miles west-south-west of Penrith.  Brougham hall, the seat of Henry, Lord Brougham and Vaux, stands on an eminence near the river Lowther, a short distance from the ruins of Brougham Castle.  It has been termed, from its elevated position and the prospects it commands, “The Windsor of the north.”  The mansion and grounds are exceedingly beautiful, and will repay the tourist for his visit thereto.  Lowther castle, the residence of the Earl of Lonsdale, is in the same district, and is one of the most princely halls in the kingdom, erected in a park of 600 acres.