500 COQUKT SIDE. 



the Carthaginians and Romans fought at Thrasimene, for since the 

 first plunge of your captured enemy you believe it may have hap- 

 pened to yourself. A few hours pass away, and throwing back the 

 small trouts you have a creelful of half-pounders, which, with your 

 first great prize, makes your creel-strap cut your shoulder; and putting 

 up your rod, you saunter down the margin of the river in search of 

 some place of refreshment and repose. 



Where a mountain-stream meets the Coquet, you find the ruins of 

 a border-keep, standing on a rocky elevation, whence two vallies 

 stretch away in lengthened vistas. A huge black cloud darkening 

 in the southern sky, together with the portentous stillness that settles 

 down upon all nature, tell you that a thunder-storm is approaching. 

 Every dimple is gone from the dark pools of the river, the winds are 

 dead, the voice of the curlew is hushed, the air itself seems sicken- 

 ing, and not a sound disturbs the awful silence save the plaintive 

 bleating of the flocks on the mountain side, conscious of the coming 

 convulsion. You seek the shelter of the old walls, and look around 

 with wonder at their enormous thickness, their narrow loopholes to ad- 

 mit the light, or to serve as lc coigns of vantage" against an approaching 

 enemy ; the holes in the stone jambs for the bars which secured the 

 massive gate, the remains of the steep winding stair which once led 

 to the upper apartments, and the projection near the fire-place above 

 the vault door for pouring scalding water, hot sand, or melted lead 

 upon the moss-troopers who might be assailing the entrance. All 

 these monuments of former lawlessness and insecurity carry your mind 

 back into the regions and times of romance. 



" Beneath these battlements, within those walls, 

 Power dwelt amid her passions ; in proud state 

 Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, 

 Doing his evil will, nor less elate 

 Than mightier heroes of a longer date. 

 What want these outlaws, conquerors should have? 

 But history's purchased page to call them great; 

 A wider space, an ornamental grave ; 

 Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave 1" 



Childe Harold. 



But now the black thunder-cloud has closed in upon the valley, 

 and hangs like a pall over a corpse, so still and dead seems the 

 whole earth. At last a bright flash pierces through the darkness, 

 and flames over hill and vale ; and, almost before the livid gleam has 

 vanished, a terrific crash of thunder bursts throughout the air, and 

 proclaims the awful proximity of the deadly fluid. There is yet a 

 more terrible proof of the danger being near for see ! on the opposite 

 hill side, not two hundred yards from the spot where we are now 

 standing, a sheep has been struck by the lightning, and lies a 

 scorched and blackened heap upon the sward. Hear how the thun- 

 der rolls through the recesses of the mountains dying, dying far, 

 far away, till another burst swallows up the sound, and startles the 

 listener to a sense of his immediate danger. Big, black, sullen drops 

 now strike and rebound from the elastic turf; the lengthened inter- 

 mission between the flash and the report proves that the elemental 

 convulsion is removing to a distance ; and at length the heavy clouds 



