After passing Reynard’s Hole, already described, the rocks rise more abruptly on either side, and appear in shapes more wild and irregular, but diversified and softened by shrubs. Dove dale is nearly three miles in length; but from the sinuosity of its course, and its projecting precipices, the views are limited. Throughout the whole of this majestic feature of country, the river Dove flows, in the halcyon days of summer, with soft murmurs, innocently and transparently over its pebbly bed; but swells into rage during the winter months. Little tufts of shrubs and underwood form islands in miniature within its bed, which enlarge and swell the other objects. The scenery of this dale is distinguished from almost every other in the united kingdoms, by the rugged, dissimilar, and frequently grotesque and fanciful appearance of the rocks. To employ the words of a tourist here, “It is, perhaps, on the whole one of the most pleasing sceneries of the kind anywhere to be met with. It has something peculiarly characteristic. Its detached, perpendicular rocks stamp it with an image entirely its own, and for that reason it affords the greater pleasure. For it is in scenery as in life. We are most struck with the peculiarity of an original character, provided there be nothing offensive THOR’S HOUSE. “Where Hamps and Manifold, their cliffs among, Each in his flinty channel winds along, With lucid lines the dusky moor divides, Hurrying to intermix their sister tides, Where still their silver-bosom’d nymphs abhor The blood-smear’d mansion of gigantic Thor— Erst fires volcanic in the marble womb Of cloud-wrapp’d Whetton rais’d the massy dome; Rocks rear’d on rocks, in huge disjointed piles, Form the tall turrets, and the lengthen’d aisles; Broad pond’rous piers sustain the roof, and wide Branch the vast rainbow ribs from side to side. While from above, descends, in milky streams, One scanty pencil of illusive beams, Suspended crags, and gaping gulfs illumes, And gilds the horrors of the deepen’d glooms. Here oft the Naiads, as they chanc’d to stray Near the dread Fane, on Thor’s returning day, Saw from red altars streams of guiltless blood, Stain their green reed-beds, and pollute their flood; Heard dying babes in wicker prisons wail, And shrieks of matrons thrill the affrighted gale; While from dark caves infernal echoes mock, And fiends triumphant shout from every rock!”—DARWIN.