[276]
The next object: is the grotto, approached by a devious path through the trees, and crossing a little torrent, that hurries from the left-hand hill to the bed of the river. Here the fancy is delighted by a noble flight of cascades, roaring down a steep declivity one hundred and fifty feet high; opposed on the other side by the aerial ruin on the summit of Mowbray point. A new and different scene now occurs, a little fairy spot of ground, sacred to stillness and retirement. This is a small verdant carpet of turf, terminated by the fountain-house, so called from its concealing the machinery of a jet d'eau, which throws a stream of water to the height of forty feet from the heart of an island in a pool to the left; an artificial littleness rather out of taste, as the opening to the right lets in one of the grandest scenes of Nature that the imagination can conceive. Here a long reach of the river Oure is beheld, rushing over its rugged bottom with uncontrolable fury; but lashing in vain the sides of its perpendicular rocky barrier, whose broad extent of uncovered face is happily contrasted by the solemn amphitheatrical crown of aged wood which waves to the wind far above the precipices. The tent walk shuts out for a short time, by the closeness of its shade, every distant object, and allows the mind a momentary repose, from the contemplation of such
