Page:The Forest Sanctuary.pdf/98
Note 3, page 8, line 10.
I see an oak before me, &c.
"I recollect hearing a traveller, of poetical temperament, expressing the kind of horror which he felt on beholding, on the banks of the Missouri, an oak of prodigious size, which had been in a manner overpowered by an enormous wild grape-vine. The vine had clasped its huge folds round the trunk, and from thence had wound about every branch and twig, until the mighty tree had withered in its embrace. It seemed like Laocoon struggling ineffectually in the hideous coils of the monster Python."—Bracebridge Hall. Chapter on Forest Trees.
Thou hast perish'd
More nobly far, my Alvar!—making known
The might of truth.
For a most interesting account of the Spanish Protestants, and the heroic devotion with which they met the spirit of persecution in the sixteenth century, see the Quarterly Review, No. 57, art. Quin's Visit to Spain.
I look'd on two,
Following his footsteps to the same dread place,
For the same guilt—his sisters!—
"A priest, named Gonzalez, had, among other proselytes, gained over two young females, his sisters, to the protestant faith. All three were confined in the dungeons of the Inquisition.