ertile,
fitt to yeeld all kind of fruite that shal be comitted
therunto. And lastly, the heavens most milde and temperat,
though somewhat more moyst then the part toward the West.

His own home at Kilcolman charmed and delighted him. It was not his
fault that its trout streams, its Mulla and Fanchin, are not as famous
as Walter Scott's Teviot and Tweed, or Wordsworth's Yarrow and Duddon,
or that its hills, Old Mole, and Arlo Hill, have not kept a poetic name
like Helvellyn and "Eildon's triple height." They have failed to become
familiar names to us. But the beauties of his home inspired more than
one sweet pastoral picture in the _Faery Queen_; and in the last
fragment remaining to us of it, he celebrates his mountains and woods
and valleys as once the fabled resort of the Divine Huntress and her
Nymphs, and the meeting-place of the Gods.

There was one drawback to the enjoyment of his Irish country life, and
of the natural attractiveness of Kilcolman. "Who knows not Arlo Hill?"
he exclaims, in the scene just referred to from the fragment on
_Mutability_. "Arlo, the best and fairest hill in all the holy island's
heights." It was well known to all Englishmen who had to do with the
South of Ireland. How well it was known in the Irish history of the
time, may be seen in the numerous references to it, under various forms,
such as Aharlo, Harlow, in the Index to the Irish Calendar of Papers of
this troublesome date, and to continual encounters and ambushes in its
notoriously dangerous woods. He means by it the highest part of the
Galtee range, below which to the north, through a glen or defile, runs
the "river Aherlow." Galtymore, the summit, rises, with precipice and
gully, more than 3000 feet, above the plains of Tipperary, and is seen
far and wide. It was connected with the "great wood," the wild region of
forest, mountain, and bog which stretched half across Munster from the
Suir to the Shannon. It was the haunt and fastness of Irish outlawry and
rebellion in the South, which so long sheltered Desmond and his
followers. Arlo and its "fair forests," harbouring "thieves and wolves,"
was an uncomfortable neighbour to Kilcolman. The poet describes it as
ruined by a curse pronounced on the lovely land by the offended goddess
of the Chase,--

Which too too true that land's in-dwellers since have found.

He was not only living in an insecure part, on the very border of
disaffection and disturbance, but