UNCASTER Castle is picturesquely situated on a hill amidst fine woods, and commanding magnificent views over beautiful Eskdale. Only the keep of the ancient castle remains, but there is a fine modern mansion, and an extensive park; the grounds are lovely, and from the terrace the finest view in Cumberland can be obtained. There is some excellent wood carving in the castle, a sculptured marble chimneypiece, and some good pictures. After the battle of Hexham, the fugitive King Henry VI. was wandering in Eskdale, when he met some shepherds who, seeing a nobleman, as they thought, in distress, conducted him to the ever-hospitable castle of Muncaster. Here he was loyally entertained; and when he left its shelter he presented Sir John Pennington with an enamelled glass vase, called the Luck of Muncaster. According to tradition, as long as the glass remains unbroken the family will never lack a male heir. There is a legend that an enemy of the house once violently threw down the casket containing the vase, and for a long time the mother of the little lord did not dare open it, sure that she would see only their shattered Luck. But when her son was of age, it was opened, and the vase was found unhurt and entire.

The Penningtons took their name from the village of Pennington, in Furness, where they resided till 1242.

The church in the park, with its ivyadorned walls, is very picturesque. It has a mass bell in a small turret, on the gable of the east end of the nave, that rang at the elevation of the host, so that the people who could not attend church, might kneel and pray at its sound. The bell is gone, but the turret remains. There are many tablets on the walls in memory of the Penningtons; and a monument erected to Sir John Pennington, Lord High Admiral, 1646, has the following honourable testimony to his worth:-

"The Parliament strongly invited him to enter into their service, but he never could be prevailed on to serve against the king."

There is an ancient cross in the south of the churchyard.

THE LUCK of EDEN HALL.

In Sandford's account of Cumberland, in 1670, he speaks thus of the old Eden Hall, now replaced by a mansion built in 1824:-

"Upon the bank of this famous river (the Eden) stands the fair, fine, and beautiful palace, called Eden Hall, orchards, and gardens, and none better for all fruit; delicate and pleasant with walks as fine as Chelsea fields; the fair river Eden gliding like the Thames along."

At the present day there is, at the end of the lawn, a public walk, called the Ladies' Walk, extending along the banks of the river for more than a mile.

There are some fine paintings in the mansion. But Eden Hall is chiefly celebrated for an old enamelled drinking-glass, called the Luck of Eden Hall, which is very carefully preserved by the family - the Musgraves.

The legend about the glass is that a butler of the house, in the days long ago, going to the well to draw water, came suddenly on a group of fairies dancing. They hurried off, but he seized a glass that they had left on the brink of the well; they endeavoured to get it from him, but he grasped it tightly, and at last, seeing that they could not recover it, they flew away singing,-

It is a beautiful enamelled glass - a rare specimen of Eastern workmanship - and is kept in a leather case of the time of Henry IV. or V. The Duke of Wharton used to throw it up into the air and catch it again, and wrote a ballad on it. Longfellow has translated one by Uhland, the German poet, on the glass. It is called-

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