efore an idol, so the little one fed the stone,
or left the basket to "the unseen spirit of the wood;" and well it was
that the little Red-riding-hood escaped the usual fate of all lonely
little foresters, for it seems there were mouths and maws in the
mountain which cheesecakes would not have satisfied. The dwellers in the
rock had a terrible fright one night from the visit of some
indescribable beast--a panther, or something worse--that blazed its
horrid eyes into their dark hole, and growled so frightfully, that if
all the bailiffs of London had surrounded their den, they would have
been less alarmed. It seemed some motherly tigress in search of her
cubs, and when she discovered the intruders, she set up such an
ululation of maternal grief as made every aisle of the forest ring
again, and so scared the inmates of her den, that, as soon as they
dared, they took to their heels down the mountain, ready to hear any hue
and cry on their track, rather than hers. This story was told us by our
guide, who gave it as the reason for their final desertion of the place.

On the stone which I climbed, I found engraven a great number of names
and initials, with dates of different years. Apparently they had been
left there by visiters from the university. In more than one place, some
ardent youth, in his first love with democracy, had taken pains to renew
the inscription, which tradition says Goffe and Whalley placed over
their retreat. "Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God." I suppose
there will always be fresh men to do Old Mortality's office for this
inscription, for the maxim is one which has long been popular in America
among patriotic declaimers. How long it will continue generally popular,
may indeed be doubted, since the abolitionists have lately adopted it,
and in their mouths it becomes an incendiary watchword, which the
supporters of slavery have no little reason to dread. I myself saw this
motto on an anti-slavery placard set up in the streets of New York.

I inferred from this inscription, and the names on the rock, that the
spot is visited by some with very different feelings from those which it
excited in me and my companions. Our valuable conductor, it is true,
spoke of "the Judges" with as much reverence as so sturdy a republican
would be likely to show to any dignity whatever; and really the honest
fellow seemed to give us credit for more tenderness than we felt, and
tried to express himself in such a manner,