Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/267

PEVERELL'S CASTLE IN THE PEAK. The agreeable fictions of a popular author have rendered the name of Peverell of the Peak familiar to most of those readers who occupy their leisvu*e in perusing works of imagi- nation. A writer who only looks at facts cannot, however, offer anything so attractive to beguile an idle hour, when in turn he endeavours to describe a spot already rendered visible to the mental eye by the pencilling of genius and fancy. To the divine gift of poetry and the felicitous turns of ex- pression which arrest in their rapid flight the glowing crea- tions of the novelist's mind, which unite the gallantry of an heroic with the wildness of a romantic age, and transfuse the ideal images of the past into the active vitality of the present, he cannot, as in consciousness he ought not to incline, for the mere sake of embellishing a dry and simple narrative. He will be content therefore to turn away his eyes from a barren and futile insight into false existencics, awaken from a delu- sive vision in which only mist, and shadows, and phantoms pass before his view, and pursuing a less indting track, en- deavour to climb to the verge where truth and error, having defined their own peculiar limits, have finally separated. Slowly and thoughtfully returning down his rugged path, at times guided by a clear light, and as frequently walking in obscurity, deciphering, as he descends, the rude alphabet of antiquity, he will endeavom' to trace its uncertain character on every crumbling ruin which the havoc of time, or the still more ruth- less hands of man have spared. To the patient archaeological enquirer, the dark labyrinth of sepulchral gloom gradually be- comes divested of its darkness, and the broken urn, the rusty sword, the casual mingling of elemental fragments, or a mere block of coarsely sculptured stone, are, in his hand, keys to a forgotten language, or the enchanter's wand, as it were, which strikes concealed light out of darkness, and elicits the earliest glimpse of stern reality. How widely separated are the thoughts, the aims, and the influence of each writer! the one can never soar too high in the unsubstantial regions of illimitable space : the other fondly clings to a piece of dull, cold earth, the actual type of the tabernacle of his flesh. Yet this low and undignified