e the
Titans.'

'My friends are at least consistent,' observed Saturn; 'though certainly
at present I can say little more for them. Between the despair of one
section of the party, and the over-sanguine expectations of the other,
they are at present quite inactive, or move only to ensure fresh
rebuffs.'

'You see little of them, then?'

'They keep to themselves: they generally frequent a lonely vale in the
neighbourhood.'

'I should so like to see them!' exclaimed Proserpine.

'Say nothing to Tiresias,' said old Saturn, who was half in love with
his fair friend, 'and we will steal upon them unperceived.' So saying,
the god struck the earth with his cane, and there instantly sprang forth
a convenient car, built of curiously carved cedar, and borne by four
enormous tawny-coloured owls. Seating himself by the side of the
delighted Proserpine, Saturn commanded the owls to bear them to the
Valley of Lamentations.

'Twas an easy fly: the chariot soon descended upon the crest of a hill:
and Saturn and Proserpine, leaving the car, commenced, by a winding
path, the slight ascent of a superior elevation. Having arrived there,
they looked down upon a valley, apparently land-locked by black and
barren mountains of the most strange, although picturesque forms. In the
centre of the valley was a black pool or tarn, bordered with dark purple
flags of an immense size, twining and twisting among which might be
observed the glancing and gliding folds of several white serpents; while
crocodiles and alligators, and other horrible forms, poked their foul
snouts with evident delight in a vast mass of black slime, which had,
at various times, exuded from the lake. A single tree only was to be
observed in this desolate place, an enormous and blasted cedar, with
scarcely a patch of verdure, but extending its black and barren branches
nearly across the valley. Seated on a loosened crag, but leaning against
the trunk of the cedar, with his arms folded, his mighty eyes fixed on
the ground, and his legs crossed with that air of complete repose which
indicates that their owner is in no hurry again to move them, was

'A form, some granite god we deemed,
Or king of palmy Nile, colossal shapes
Such as Syene's rosy quarries yield
To Memphian art; Horus, Osiris called,
Or Amenoph, who, on the Theban plain,
With magic melody the sun salutes;
Or he, far mightier, to whose conquering car
Monarchs were yoked