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Some rocks, indeed, were like vast animals round which molten granite had been poured, preserving them eternally. The heads of great dogs, like the dogs of Ossian, sprang out in profile from the repulsing mainland; stupendous gargoyles grinned at them from dark points of excoriated cliff. Farther off, the face of a battered sphinx stared with unheeding look into the vast sea and sky beyond.

One of these was the height on which stands Stirling Castle, and which reclines on the plain like a hound or a lion or a sphinx, holding the castle on the highest part, where its head should be. A mile or two distant from this picturesque hill rises another, still more striking, called the Abbey Craig, on which is a ruin, and where is to be built the monument to William Wallace.

Brett, who loved every inch of her, from the marvellous little gold figure of a sphinx, which he had had specially designed and carved as a mascot, down to the polished knobs and buttons in the engine-room, had expatiated with considerable length and fervour upon her various beauties and advantages, and by the time he and Ann emerged on to the deck once more it was to find it deserted by the rest of the party.

"Uprose the merry Sphinx, And crouched no more in stone; She melted, into purple cloud, She silvered in the moon; She spired into a yellow flame; She flowered in blossoms red; She flowed into a foaming wave; She stood Monadnoc's head. "Thorough a thousand voices Spoke the universal dame, 'Who telleth one of my meanings Is master of all I am."

Some of them were supposed to combine the members of different animals; such were the Sphinx and Chimaera; and to these all the terrible qualities of wild beasts were attributed, together with human sagacity and faculties. Others, as the giants, differed from men chiefly in their size; and in this particular we must recognize a wide distinction among them.

As Gambetta was speaking, of a sudden he saw before him, at the extremity of the room, the lady of his dreams, the sphinx of his waking hours, the woman who four years earlier had torn up the note which he addressed to her, but who more recently had kept his written words.

"The Dial" was edited at first by Margaret Fuller, afterwards by Emerson, who contributed more than forty articles in prose and verse, among them "The Conservative," "The Transcendentalist," "Chardon Street and Bible Convention," and some of his best and best known poems, "The Problem," "Woodnotes," "The Sphinx," "Fate."

The country around is vexed with a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx, who has learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans, and on every failure to resolve it one of them was devoured. But no person can solve the riddle.

The broad steps leading to the entrance were guarded on either side by a sculptured Sphinx, each of whom held, in its massive stone paws, a plain shield, inscribed with the old Roman greeting to strangers, "Salve!" Over the portico was designed a scroll which bore the name "Hotel Mars" in clearly cut capitals, and the monogram "C. H."

He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous power of giving to the wildest fancies an air of vraisemblance. "Yes," said Walkham, the sculptor, "it's a most curious thing." "What is?" asked Ernest, who had been dreaming over the Sphinx that was looking at him from its corner with the sarcastic smile of five thousand years.