--MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

When the Countess of Leicester arrived at the outer gate of the Castle
of Kenilworth, she found the tower, beneath which its ample portal arch
opened, guarded in a singular manner. Upon the battlements were placed
gigantic warders, with clubs, battle-axes, and other implements of
ancient warfare, designed to represent the soldiers of King Arthur;
those primitive Britons, by whom, according to romantic tradition,
the Castle had been first tenanted, though history carried back its
antiquity only to the times of the Heptarchy.

Some of these tremendous figures were real men, dressed up with vizards
and buskins; others were mere pageants composed of pasteboard and
buckram, which, viewed from beneath, and mingled with those that
were real, formed a sufficiently striking representation of what was
intended. But the gigantic porter who waited at the gate beneath, and
actually discharged the duties of warder, owed none of his terrors to
fictitious means. We was a man whose huge stature, thews, sinews, and
bulk in proportion, would have enabled him to enact Colbrand, Ascapart,
or any other giant of romance, without raising himself nearer to heaven
even by the altitude of a chopin. The legs and knees of this son of Anak
were bare, as were his arms from a span below the shoulder; but his
feet were defended with sandals, fastened with cross straps of scarlet
leather studded with brazen knobs. A close jerkin of scarlet velvet
looped with gold, with short breeches of the same, covered his body and
a part of his limbs; and he wore on his shoulders, instead of a cloak,
the skin of a black bear. The head of this formidable person was
uncovered, except by his shaggy, black hair, which descended on either
side around features of that huge, lumpish, and heavy cast which are
often annexed to men of very uncommon size, and which, notwithstanding
some distinguished exceptions, have created a general prejudice against
giants, as being a dull and sullen kind of persons. This tremendous
warder was appropriately armed with a heavy club spiked with steel. In
fine, he represented excellently one of those giants of popular romance,
who figure in every fairy tale or legend of knight-errantry.

The demeanour of this modern Titan, when Wayland Smith bent his
attention to him, had in it something arguing much mental embarrassment
and vexation; for sometimes he sat down for an instant on a massive
stone bench, which se