This immense gorge of the Avon was created, according to tradition, A.D. 33, on the day of the Crucifixion, in the course of a world-wide earthquake accompanying that event. Then, according to that strictly unreliable story, the hills were rent asunder, and the ancient British camps at St. Vincent’s and at Borough Walls and Stoke Leigh had the newly formed river Avon set between them. Geologists know better than this, but in the early years of the nineteenth century, when Miss Ann Powell sat upon the heights of Clifton and, contemplating the scene, was filled with great thoughts, which she eventually poured forth in the shape of something then thought to be poetry, the tradition was not considered to be so absurd as it now is. In her “Clifton, a Poem,” published in 1821, we learn some things new to history, especially as to the year A.D. 33. Then, according to Miss Ann Powell, the Romans were encamped here, in victorious arrogance, and the very day of the Crucifixion chanced to be that which the Roman general had fixed for a reception of conquered British chiefs: Our humbled kings upon his levee wait, This day appointed as a day of state. Unfortunately for the poem, the Romans were not in Britain at the time. They had not been here for eighty-seven years, since the last departure of Julius Caesar, in B.C. 54, and were not to land on these shores again until ten years more had passed: in A.D. 43. As a description of an earthquake which did not happen, and an account of disasters which did not befall people who were not here, the poem is a somewhat remarkable production. The authoress herself is so overwrought that she mixes past and present tenses. Let us see how Romans and Britons behaved under the appalling circumstances: Now darkness fast the distant hills surround; Beneath their feet, slow trembling, mov’d the ground; High tempests rose that shook the stately roof, Nor was the conqu’ror’s heart to this quite proof. “Sure nature is dissolv’d!” the Roman cry’d. “Sure nature is dissolv’d!” the guests reply’d. Now awful thunders with majestic sound, And vivid lightnings separate the ground; The crash tremendous fill’d each heart with fear; The sound of gushing waters strikes the ear. Ah! now destruction’s hurl’d thro’ earth and sky; Men seeking safety know not where to fly; They through the ramparts run to make their way; The guards lay prostrate there with sore dismay. The Britons mount their horses—fly in haste: No time in idle compliments they waste. How delicious that last line! “No time in idle compliments they waste.” It flings us down from the heights of a world in pieces to the inanities of the “How d’ye do’s” of afternoon teas.