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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
321

other in nearly a vertical line, terminated by one, the most elevated and craggy, casting its huge broad surface into the bosom of the seas. Such was the bold and grand display presented from that romantic eminence.

The mansion of the General was spacious, and gave ample scope for the exercise of Mrs. De Brooke's judicious taste. The windows from the back commanded the striking scene we have described; those in front the parade, at whose furthest extremity the soldiers and recruits performed their military evolutions. Beyond them stood those massy ramparts, mounted with heavy cannon, which, when discharged, spread far and wide peals of rolling thunder, resounding through the coast, and reverberated amongst those stupendous rocks upon which the spray foamed with turbulent violence. All other objects might haply fleet away in the course of nature and events of things, and still the narrowest chink or smallest bay in the vicinity of D—— Fort, into which the poor fisherman was wont to drive his little bark, would continue visible to the gaze, indelible and unchanged by time or tide!

How little can the private individual, in his narrow walk through life, form to his fancy an idea of the entirely opposite course pursued by those