RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 401 



heir-loom to the burgh. The chimes would have delighted 

 the heart of old Lisle Bowles, the poet of 



" Well-tun' d bell's enchanting harmony." 



I could, however, have preferred listening to their music, 

 though it seemed really very sweet, a few hundred yards 

 further away ; and the quiet clerical poet, the restorer of 

 the Sonnet in England, would, I doubt not, have been of 

 the same mind. The oft-recurring tones of those bells that 

 ring throughout his verse, and to which Byron wickedly pro- 

 posed adding a cap, form but an ingredient of the poetry in 

 which he describes them ; and they are represented always 

 as distant tones, that, while they mingle with the softer har- 

 monies of nature, never overpower them. 



" How sweet the tuneful bells responsive peal ! 



* * * * 



And, hark ! with lessening cadence now they fall, 



And now, along the white and level tide, 



They fling their melancholy music wide ! 

 Bidding me many a tender thought recall 

 Of happy hours departed, and those years 



When, from an antique tower, ere life's fair prime, 



The mournful mazes of their mingling chime 

 First wak'd my wondering childhood into tears !" 



From the Cathedral I passed to the mansion of old Earl 

 Patrick, a stately ruin, in the more ornate castellated style 

 of the sixteenth century. It stands in the middle of a 

 dense thicket of what are trying to be trees, and have so far 

 succeeded, that they conceal, on one of the sides, the lower 

 storey of the building, and rise over the spring of the large 

 richly-decorated turrets. These last form so much nearer 

 the base of the edifice than is common in our old castles, that 

 they exhibit the appearance rather of hanging towers than of 

 turrets, of towers with their foundations cut away. The 

 projecting windows, with their deep mouldings, square mul- 

 lions, and cruciform shot-holes, are rich specimens of their 

 peculiar style ; and, with the double-windowed turrets with 



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