Beautiful Rienzi; or, The secret vendetta — page 149: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

144 BEAUTIFUL RIENZL CHAPTER XVIII. SILVERLEA. ‘“‘So thick the boughis and the leavis green Beshaded all the alleys that there were. ¥ * * * * * Growing so fair with branches here and there,’ That as it seemed toa lyf without The boughis spread the arbour all about.” § JAMES Ist, SCOTLAND. Our journey was soon over; my eagerly recurring query— ‘‘Ts this Ranelagh ?”—was at last answered by my father in the affirmative (who must have dislocated his neck to satisfy my curiosity), and the train rushed with a savage whoop into a small covered station; the guard shouted in at the door, ‘‘ Ranelagh!’ and we rose from our seats. In five minutes we were huddled together on a wooden platform, my mother supporting Isolina on her arm; Sophie mounted guard over a muffled cage containing my little hoopoes from the Valley of Arno; a whimpering Neapolitan pup in her arms, of undoubted breed but stupid disposi- tion—also mine; a valise on either side of her, and an um- brella dangling from her little finger; while my father res- cued our baggage from the incredulous vanguards, and I looked about in vain for signs of the village. At last we were ushered out of the station by one of a group of boys, whose straw hat was like the poet’s dream: | «“T had a hat, which was not all a hat, Part of the rim was gone;” and after mounting a slight hill, the hotel of Ranelagh was designated to us and I beheld the village. There was a broad, grass-grown street, fenced off appro- priately by what might pass for ‘broken lines” in geom- etry, but to the general eye looked like zig-zag fencing; infringed on, farther on, by some half a dozen houses on either side, squatted cozily behind tall poplars or Balm of Gilead trees. Qn the horizon a deep, blue belt of ocean wavered with CORNUCG OOO S (©)