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the vale by means of the ravine, would find its progress arrested,
after a few yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which
tumbled the cascade that had arrested my attention as I first drew near
the domain. In short, the only ingress or egress was through a gate
occupying a rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which
I stopped to reconnoitre the scene.
I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the
whole of its course. Its two general directions, as I have said, were
first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the
stream, sweeping backward, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a
peninsula which was very nearly an island, and which included about the
sixteenth of an acre. On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house--and when
I say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, "etait
d'une architecture inconnue dans les annales de la terre," I mean,
merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of
combined novelty and propriety--in a word, of poetry--(for, than in the
words just employed, I could scarcely give, of poetry in the abstract,
a more rigorous definition)--and I do not mean that merely outre was
perceptible in any respect.
In fact nothing could well be more simple--more utterly unpretending
than this cottage. Its marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic
arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it,
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