neck denuded of feathers, her eyes surrounded by an iris of an orange tawny colour, and a position more horizontal than erect, distinguished her as much from the noble carriage and graceful proportion of the eagle, as those of the lion place him in the ranks of creation above the gaunt, ravenous, grisly, yet dastard wolf.

"As if arrested by a charm, the eyes of young Philipson remained bent on this ill-omened and ill-favoured bird, without his having the power to remove them. The apprehension of dangers, ideal as well as real, weighed upon his weakened mind, disabled as it was by the circumstances of his situation. The near approach of a creature not more loathsome to the human race than averse to come within their reach, seemed as ominous as it was unusual. Why did it gaze on him with such glaring earnestness, projecting its disgusting form, as if presently to alight upon his person? The foul bird, was she the demon of the place to which her name referred? and did she come to exult, that an intruder on her haunts seemed involved amid their perils, with little hope or chance of deliverance? Or was it a native vulture of the rocks, whose sagacity foresaw that the rash traveller was soon destined to become its victim? Could the creature, whose senses are said to be so acute, argue from circumstances the stranger's approaching death, and wait, like a raven or hooded crow by a dying sheep, for the earliest opportunity to commence her ravenous banquet? Was he doomed to feel its beak and talons before his heart's blood should cease to beat? Had he already lost the dignity of humanity, the awe which the being formed in the image of his Maker, inspires into all inferior creatures?

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Apprehensions so painful served more than all that reason could suggest, to renew, in some degree, the elasticity of the young man's mind. By waving his handkerchief, using, however, the greatest precaution in his movements, he succeeded in scaring the vulture from his vicinity. It rose from its resting place, screaming harshly and dolefully, and sailed on its expanded pinions to seek a place of more undisturbed repose, while the adventurous traveller felt a sensible pleasure at being relieved of its disgusting presence.

"With more collected ideas, the young man, who could obtain, from his position, a partial view of the platform he had left, endeavoured to testify his safety to his father, by displaying, as high as he could, the banner by which he had chased off the vulture. Like them, too, he heard, but at a less distance, the burst of the great Swiss horn, which seemed to announce some near succour. He replied by shouting and waving his flag, to direct assistance to the spot where it was so much required; and, recalling his faculties, which had almost deserted him, he laboured mentally to recover hope, and with hope the means and motive for exertion.

"A faithful Catholic, he eagerly recommended himself in prayer to Our Lady of Einseidlen, and making vows of propitiation, besought her intercession, that he might be delivered from his dreadful condition. 'Or, gracious Lady!' he concluded his orison, if it is my doom to lose my life like a hunted fox amidst this savage wilderness of tottering VOL. IV. No. 8.

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crags, restore at least my natural sense of patience and courage, and let not one who has lived like a man, though a sinful one, meet death like a timid hare!'

"Having devoutly recommended himself to that Protectress, of whom the legends of the Catholic Church form a picture so amiable, Arthur, though every nerve still shook with his late agitation, and his heart throbbed with a violence that threatened to suffocate him, turned his thoughts and observation to the means of effecting his escape.But, as he looked around him, he became more and more sensible how much he was enervated by the bodily injuries and mental agony which he had sustained during his late peril. He could not, by any effort of which he was capable, fix his giddy and bewildered eyes on the scene around him ;-they seemed to reel till the landscape danced along with them, and a motely chaos of thickets and tall cliffs, which interposed between him and the ruinous Castle of Geierstein, mixed and whirled round in such confusion, that nothing, save that such an idea was the suggestion of partial insanity, prevented him from throwing himself from the tree, as if to join the wild dance to which his disturbed brain had given motion.

"Heaven be my protection!' said the unfortunate young man, closing his eyes, in hopes, by abstracting himself from the terrors of his situation, to compose his too active imagination, 'my senses are abandoning me!'

"He became still more convinced that this was the case, when a female voice, in a high pitched but eminently musical accent, was heard at no great distance, as if calling to him. He opened his eyes once more, raised his head, and looked towards the place from whence the sounds seemed to come, though far from being certain that they existed saving in his own disordered imagination. The vision which appeared had almost confirmed him in the opinion that his mind was unsettled, and his senses in no state to serve him accurately.

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Upon the very summit of a pyramidical rock that rose out of the depth of the valley, was seen a female figure, so obscured by mist, that only the outline could be traced. The form, reflected against the sky, appeared rather the undefined lineament of a spirit than of a mortal maiden; for her person seemed as light, and scarcely more opaque, than the thin cloud that surrounded her pedestal. Arthur's first belief was, that the Virgin had heard his vows, and had descended in person to his rescue; and he was about to recite his Ave Maria, when the voice again called to him with the singular shrill modulation of the mountain haloo, by which the natives of the Alps can hold conference with each other from one mountain ridge to another, across ravines of great depth and width.

"While he debated how to address this unexpected apparition, it disappeared from the point which it at first occupied, and presently after became again visible, perched on the cliff out of which projected the tree in which Arthur had taken refuge. Her personal appearance, as well as her dress, made it then apparent that she was a maiden of these mountains, familiar with their dangerous paths. He saw that a

beautiful young woman stood before him, who regarded him with a mixture of pity and wonder.

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"Stranger,' she at length said, 'who are you, and whence come you?' "I am a stranger, maiden, as you justly term me,' answered the young man, raising himself as well as he could. I left Lucerne this morning, with my father, and a guide. I parted with them not three furlongs from hence. May it please you, gentle maiden, to warn them of my safety, for I know my father will be in despair upon my account?'

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Willingly,' said the maiden, 'but I think my uncle, or some one of my kinsmen, must have already found them, and will prove faithful guides. Can I not aid you?-are you wounded?- -are you hurt?We were alarmed by the fall of a rock-ay, and yonder it lies, a mass of no ordinary size.'

"As the Swiss maiden spoke thus, she approached so close to the verge of the precipice, and looked with such indifference into the gulf, that the sympathy which connects the actor and spectator upon such occasions, brought back the sickness and vertigo from which Arthur had just recovered, and he sunk back into his former more recumbent posture, with something like a faint groan.

"You are then ill?' said the maiden, who observed him turn pale'Where and what is the harm you have received ?'

"None, gentle maiden, saving some bruises of little import; but my head turns, and my heart grows sick, when I see you so near the verge of the cliff.'

"Is that all?' replied the Swiss maiden. 'Know, stranger, that I do not stand on my uncle's hearth with more security than I have stood upon precipices, compared to which this is a child's leap. You, too, stranger, if, as I judge from the traces, you have come along the edge of the precipice which the earth-slide hath laid bare, ought to be far beyond such weakness, since surely you must be well entitled to call yourself a cragsman.'

"I might have called myself so half an hour since,' answered Arthur; but I think I shall hardly venture to assume the name in future.' "Be not downcast,' said his kind adviser, for a passing qualm, which will at times cloud the spirit and dazzle the eyesight of the bravest and most experienced. Raise yourself upon the trunk of the tree, and advance closer to the rock out of which it grows. Observe the place well. It is easy for you, when you have attained the lower part of the projecting stem, to gain by one bold step the solid rock upon which I stand, after which there is no danger or difficulty worthy of mention to a young man, whose limbs are whole, and whose courage is active.'

"My limbs are indeed sound,' replied the youth, but I am ashamed to think how much my courage is broken. Yet I will not disgrace the interest you have taken in an unhappy wanderer, by listening longer to the dastardly suggestions of a feeling, which till to-day has been a stranger to my bosom.'

"The maiden looked on him anxiously, and with much interest, as, raising himself cautiously, and moving along the trunk of the tree,

which lay nearly horizontal from the rock, and seemed to bend as he changed his posture, the youth at length stood upright, within what, on level ground, had been but an extended stride to the cliff on which the Swiss maiden stood. But instead of being a step to be taken on the level and firm ground, it was one which must cross a dark abyss, at the bottom of which a torrent surged and boiled with incredible fury. Arthur's knees knocked against each other, his feet became of lead, and seemed no longer at his command; and he experienced in a stronger degree than ever, that unnerving influence, which those who have been overwhelmed by it in a situation of like peril never can forget, and which others, happily strangers to its power, may have difficulty even in comprehending.

"The young woman discerned his emotion, and foresaw its probable consequences. As the only mode in her power to restore his confidence, she sprung lightly from the rock to the stem of the tree, on which she alighted with the ease and security of a bird, and in the same instant back to the cliff; and extending her hand to the stranger, My arm,' she said, 'is but a slight balustrade; yet do but step forward with resolution, and you will find it as secure as the battlement of Berne." But shame now evercame terror so much, that Arthur, declining assistance which he could not have accepted without feeling lowered in his own eyes, took heart of grace, and successfully achieved the formidable step which placed him upon the same cliff with his kind assistant.

"To seize her hand and raise it to his lips, in affectionate token of gratitude and respect, was naturally the youth's first action; nor was it possible for the maiden to have prevented him from doing so, without assuming a degree of prudery foreign to her character, and occasion a ceremonious debate upon a matter of no great consequence, where the scene of action was a rock scarce five feet long by three in width."—Vol. i. pp. 38-42.

We may be "oblivious," but we cannot call from the ample stores which Sir Walter himself has supplied, anything superior in descriptive power to the passage we have quoted. It breathes of genuine inspiration-it bears the unequivocal stamp of his ripened, but still vigorous intellect; and amidst these bold and daring touches, there is such distinctness, that we hear the blast of the tempest-hold in our breath-as the gallant stranger traces his dangerous way from crag to crag, on the brink of the naked precipice-feel the earth tremble beneath our feet, as the rock on which he leaps, quivers and reels from its fearful height to plunge into the abyss-and grow faint and stiff with horror, while Arthur, unnerved and stunned by the imminent danger, clings to the frail support of the blasted tree, and vibrates, while his brain reels and his senses fail-in the very gorge of the yawning gulf, there is that distinctness, we say, in the whole scene, that we recur to it, as one familiar to our memory rather than

to our imagination, and the features are pencilled with such truth and individuality of expression, that it seems to us, that were a dozen artists to employ their pencils in the sketch, they would exhibit, with little variation, but the same picture! From the eminent success of this descriptive effort, and from the striking beauties of every description, scattered over the work, we venture to congratulate the public on the unabated vigour and unimpaired powers of the distinguished author! Long may he live to delight, adorn, instruct and purify the age! There is no dimness in his mental vision-no faltering of his elastic step-no quailing of his manly spirit! Fallen though he be, "into the sear and yellow leaf," he seems to be endowed with a patriarchal vitality-and we may apply to him, with slight change, what Ahenobarbus said of the sorceress of EgyptAge cannot wither him--nor custom stale His infinite variety."

We have heard it surmised that our author would exhaust himself that he had travelled over so wide a circuit-discussed such variety of topics-exhibited such diversities of character— that he must have tasked his powers of invention, even to weariness-fatigued his fancy-worked up all his materials of knowledge, and exhausted every field of research-so that pained by mere satiety of conquest, he might sigh (a literary Alexander) for other worlds to conquer! We have never participated in this fear. That the frost of age might one day congeal it, we were well aware, but that a fountain so full-whose gushing waters had so recently overflowed, fertilizing and refreshing wherever they rested, should suddenly fail and be utterly dried up we never did fear. We recollected--when the history, antiquities and manners of Scotland had been sketched in all their aspects and bearings-what spirited incursions our author had made on English ground, and we had seen token in "Ivanhoe" and Kenilworth," that like some of his own border ancestry, he had returned red-handed from the foray, and laden with the spoils of the South! We remembered with what spirit he had pitched his tent, and reined his war-steed before the walls of Jerusalem, and that the fair fields of France had lent their laurels to enrich his literary chaplet. With these memorials of his prowess by us, we did not fear that he would exhaust himself, while new regions remained to be explored, new incidents to be imagined, and new modes of life to be delineated. Accordingly, in the work before us, he has broken new ground-sketching, with his accustomed felicity, the terrific outlines of Alpine scenery, and delineating in the stern hardy fea