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The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott (25); Anne of Geierstein
The Novels and Poems of Sir Walter Scott Anne of Geierstein - 25 Author:Sir Walter Scott Volume: 25 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1894 Original Publisher: Estes Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you c... more »an select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN; OB, THE MAIDEN OF THE MIST. CHAPTER L The mists boil up around the glaciers ; clouds Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphurous, Like foam from the roused ocean. I am giddy. Man/red. The course of four centuries has well-nigh elapsed since the series of events which are related in the following chapters took place on the Continent. The records which contained the outlines of the history, and might be referred to as proof of its veracity, were long preserved in the superb library of the Monastery of St. Gall, but perished, with many of the literary treasures of that establishment, when the convent was plundered by the French revolutionary armies. The events are fixed, by historical date, to the middle of the fifteenth century -- that important period, when chivalry still shone with a setting ray, soon about to be totally obscured: in some countries, by the establishment of free institutions; in others, by thatof arbitrary power, which alike rendered useless the interference of those self-endowed redressers of wrongs, whose only warrant of authority was the sword. Amid the general light which had recently shone upon Europe, France, Burgundy, and Italy, but more especially Austria, had been made acquainted with the character of a people of whose very existence they had before been scarcely conscious. It is true, that the inhabitants of those countries which lie in the vicinity of the Alps, that immense barrier, were not ignorant that, notwithstanding their rugged and desolate appearance, the secluded valleys which winded among t...« less