attendance upon these animals, each and all.

Along the eastern and western cliffs--where, toward the upper portion of
the amphitheatre, the boundaries were more or less precipitous--grew ivy
in great profusion--so that only here and there could even a glimpse of
the naked rock be obtained. The northern precipice, in like manner,
was almost entirely clothed by grape-vines of rare luxuriance; some
springing from the soil at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges
on its face.

The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little
domain, was crowned by a neat stone wall, of sufficient height to
prevent the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence kind was observable
elsewhere; for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed:--any
stray sheep, for example, which should attempt to make its way out of
the vale by means of the ravine, would find its progress arrested,
after a few yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which
tumbled the cascade that had arrested my attention as I first drew near
the domain. In short, the only ingress or egress was through a gate
occupying a rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which
I stopped to reconnoitre the scene.

I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the
whole of its course. Its two general directions, as I have said, were
first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the
stream, sweeping backward, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a
peninsula which was very nearly an island, and which included about the
sixteenth of an acre. On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house--and when
I say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, "etait
d'une architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre," I mean,
merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of
combined novelty and propriety--in a word, of poetry--(for, than in the
words just employed, I could scarcely give, of poetry in the abstract,
a more rigorous definition)--and I do not mean that merely outre was
perceptible in any respect.

In fact nothing could well be more simple--more utterly unpretending
than this cottage. Its marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic
arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it,
that some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush.

The point of view from which I first saw the valley, was not altogether,
although