pped, as it were, in mid air, upon this trembling structure.
She stopped upon observing him below, and, with an air of graceful ease
which made him shudder, waved her handkerchief to him by way of signal.
He was unable, from the sense of dizziness which her situation conveyed,
to return the salute; and was never more relieved than when the fair
apparition passed on from the precarious eminence which she seemed to
occupy with so much indifference, and disappeared on the other side.

Advancing a few yards, and passing under the bridge which he had viewed
with so much terror, the path ascended rapidly from the edge of the
brook, and the glen widened into a sylvan amphitheatre, waving with
birch, young oaks, and hazels, with here and there a scattered yew-tree.
The rocks now receded, but still showed their grey and shaggy crests
rising among the copse-wood. Still higher rose eminences and peaks, some
bare, some clothed with wood, some round and purple with heath, and
others splintered into rocks and crags. At a short turning the path,
which had for some furlongs lost sight of the brook, suddenly placed
Waverley in front of a romantic waterfall. It was not so remarkable
either for great height or quantity of water as for the beautiful
accompaniments which made the spot interesting. After a broken cataract
of about twenty feet, the stream was received in a large natural basin
filled to the brim with water, which, where the bubbles of the fall
subsided, was so exquisitely clear that, although it was of great depth,
the eye could discern each pebble at the bottom. Eddying round this
reservoir, the brook found its way as if over a broken part of the ledge,
and formed a second fall, which seemed to seek the very abyss; then,
wheeling out beneath from among the smooth dark rocks which it had
polished for ages, it wandered murmuring down the glen, forming the
stream up which Waverley had just ascended. [Footnote: See Note 24.] The
borders of this romantic reservoir corresponded in beauty; but it was
beauty of a stern and commanding cast, as if in the act of expanding into
grandeur. Mossy banks of turf were broken and interrupted by huge
fragments of rock, and decorated with trees and shrubs, some of which had
been planted under the direction of Flora, but so cautiously that they
added to the grace without diminishing the romantic wildness of the
scene.

Here, like one of those lovely forms which decorate the landscapes of
Poussin,