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THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS_.


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SITTING IN THE DRUID'S CHAIR.


We detach the following scene from one of Mr. Horace Smith's _Tales of
the_ _Early Ages_. The date is the fifth century, about twenty years
after the final withdrawing of the Romans from Britain. The actors are
Hengist, the Saxon chief, Guinessa, his daughter, betrothed to Oscar, a
young prince, and Gryffhod, a Briton of some distinction, and proprietor
of Caer-Broc, a villa on the Kentish coast, where the parties are
sojourning. The incident embodies the _superstition of sitting in the
Druid's Chair_, similar in its portentous moment to sitting in St.
Michael's Chair, in Cornwall. It is told with considerable force and
picturesque beauty.

"In the morning, Hengist informed his daughter, to her no small dismay,
that he meant to take her to Canterbury for the purpose of introducing
her to her uncle Horsa, desiring her to make preparations for her
immediate departure. 'But before I leave Caer-Broc,' said the Saxon, 'I
would fain mount that lofty cliff up which I climbed fifteen years ago,