n jest nor earnest,
ever again to practise judicial astrology.

He hesitated a good deal what he should say to the Laird of Ellangowan
concerning the horoscope of his first-born; and at length resolved
plainly to tell him the judgment which he had formed, at the same time
acquainting him with the futility of the rules of art on which he had
proceeded. With this resolution he walked out upon the terrace.

If the view of the scene around Ellangowan had been pleasing by
moonlight, it lost none of its beauty by the light of the morning sun.
The land, even in the month of November, smiled under its influence. A
steep but regular ascent led from the terrace to the neighbouring
eminence, and conducted Mannering to the front of the old castle. It
consisted of two massive round towers projecting deeply and darkly at the
extreme angles of a curtain, or flat wall, which united them, and thus
protecting the main entrance, that opened through a lofty arch in the
centre of the curtain into the inner court of the castle. The arms of the
family, carved in freestone, frowned over the gateway, and the portal
showed the spaces arranged by the architect for lowering the portcullis
and raising the drawbridge. A rude farm-gate, made of young fir-trees
nailed together, now formed the only safeguard of this once formidable
entrance. The esplanade in front of the castle commanded a noble
prospect.

The dreary scene of desolation through which Mannering's road had lain on
the preceding evening was excluded from the view by some rising ground,
and the landscape showed a pleasing alternation of hill and dale,
intersected by a river, which was in some places visible, and hidden in
others, where it rolled betwixt deep and wooded banks. The spire of a
church and the appearance of some houses indicated the situation of a
village at the place where the stream had its junction with the ocean.
The vales seemed well cultivated, the little inclosures into which they
were divided skirting the bottom of the hills, and sometimes carrying
their lines of straggling hedgerows a little way up the ascent. Above
these were green pastures, tenanted chiefly by herds of black cattle,
then the staple commodity of the country, whose distant low gave no
unpleasing animation to the landscape. The remoter hills were of a
sterner character, and, at still greater distance, swelled into mountains
of dark heath, bordering the horizon with a screen which gave a defined
and l