gateway, gave a double portion of depth
and majesty to the high yet gloomy arch under which it opened. The carved
stone escutcheon of the ancient family, bearing for their arms three
wolves' heads, was hung diagonally beneath the helmet and crest, the
latter being a wolf couchant pierced with an arrow. On either side stood
as supporters, in full human size or larger, a salvage man PROPER, to use
the language of heraldry, WREATHED AND CINCTURED, and holding in his hand
an oak tree ERADICATED, that is, torn up by the roots.

'And the powerful barons who owned this blazonry,' thought Bertram,
pursuing the usual train of ideas which flows upon the mind at such
scenes--'do their posterity continue to possess the lands which they had
laboured to fortify so strongly? or are they wanderers, ignorant perhaps
even of the fame or power of their fore-fathers, while their hereditary
possessions are held by a race of strangers? Why is it,' he thought,
continuing to follow out the succession of ideas which the scene
prompted--'why is it that some scenes awaken thoughts which belong as it
were to dreams of early and shadowy recollection, such as my old Brahmin
moonshie would have ascribed to a state of previous existence? Is it the
visions of our sleep that float confusedly in our memory, and are
recalled by the appearance of such real objects as in any respect
correspond to the phantoms they presented to our imagination? How often
do we find ourselves in society which we have never before met, and yet
feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-defined consciousness that
neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject are entirely new; nay,
feel as if we could anticipate that part of the conversation which has
not yet taken place! It is even so with me while I gaze upon that ruin;
nor can I divest myself of the idea that these massive towers and that
dark gateway, retiring through its deep-vaulted and ribbed arches, and
dimly lighted by the courtyard beyond, are not entirely strange to me.
Can it be that they have been familiar to me in infancy, and that I am to
seek in their vicinity those friends of whom my childhood has still a
tender though faint remembrance, and whom I early exchanged for such
severe task-masters? Yet Brown, who, I think, would not have deceived me,
always told me I was brought off from the eastern coast, after a skirmish
in which my father was killed; and I do remember enough of a horrid scene
of violence to stren