The braver portion, whose patriotism could be relied on, was ill-armed and undisciplined, while the enemy's troops consisted of veterans in the highest state of equipment and training, familiarized with victory and commanded by officers of proved skill and valor.

It would be as rational to contend that a mirror which had been cracked into radii, by a bullet, like those we have so often seen in Paris, would reflect faithfully, as to suppose a mind familiarized to such abuses would be sensitive on practical and common sense things.

Towers filled with irons, chains, ancient arms, tombs, ruins, dungeons, cold and silent vaults, a pit called the well of blood, the funeral cry of owls and of vultures, mingled with the roar of the wavessuch are the objects and sounds with which the eye and ear are familiarized in these dreary abodes, according to poor Ponqueville, the traveller, who speaks from experiencewithin the walls.

Familiarized as all who heard her were with spectacles of horror and tales of woe, they could not listen to this sad recital, nor look upon her distracted countenance, without the deepest commiseration.

In substance, then, the romantic pastoral in England was a combination of the Arcadian drama of Italy with the chivalric romance of Spain, as familiarized through the medium of Sidney's work, and also, though less consistently, with the never very fully developed tradition of the mythological play.