of reception-rooms, well may they be
styled so, in which dukes, duchesses, earls, countesses, archbishops,
bishops, mayors, mayoresses--not forgetting the writers themselves, both
male and female--congregate and press upon one another; how cheering, how
refreshing, after having been nearly knocked down with such an
atmosphere, to come in contact with genuine stable hartshorn.

* * * * *

My curiosity had led me to a most extraordinary place, which quite
beggars the scanty powers of description with which I am gifted. I
stumbled on amongst ruined walls, and at one time found I was treading
over vaults, as I suddenly started back from a yawning orifice, into
which my next step as I strolled musing along, would have precipitated
me. I proceeded for a considerable way by the eastern wall, till I heard
a tremendous bark, and presently an immense dog, such as those which
guard the flocks in the neighbourhood against the wolves, came bounding
to attack me 'with eyes that glowed, and fangs that grinned.' Had I
retreated, or had recourse to any other mode of defence than that which I
invariably practise under such circumstances, he would probably have
worried me; but I stooped till my chin nearly touched my knee, and looked
him full in the eyes, and, as John Leyden says, in the noblest ballad
which the Land of Heather has produced:

'The hound lie yowled, and back he fled,
As struck with fairy charm.'

It is a fact known to many people, and I believe it has been frequently
stated, that no large and fierce dog or animal of any kind, with the
exception of the bull, which shuts its eyes and rushes blindly forward,
will venture to attack an individual who confronts it with a firm and
motionless countenance. I say large and fierce, for it is much easier to
repel a bloodhound or bear of Finland in this manner than a dung-hill cur
or a terrier, against which a stick or a stone is a much more certain
defence. This will astonish no one who considers that the calm reproving
glance of reason, which allays the excesses of the mighty and courageous
in our own species, has seldom any other effect than to add to the
insolence of the feeble and foolish, who become placid as doves upon the
infliction of chastisements which, if attempted to be applied to the
former, would only serve to render them more terrible, and, like
gunpowder cast on a flame, cause them, in mad desperation, to scatter
destruction around them.

* * * * *