Britain ... - Blue-Lite

108 NOTES TO THE ENGLISH SLAVE.
40
( )
on his flesh
To carve the Danish eagle, a keen torment
That joys me to retaliate on those dogs. . . p. 72.
Carving the eagle, or stripping the skin from the shoulders
and turning the flaps back, was a favourite mode of torture
practised by the Danes on their prisoners.
( 41 )
The fearful spectre rushes,
In lightning clad, upon me. . .
p. 73.
" It is asserted of Theodric the Goth, who after a life of
virtue and glory descended with shame and guilt into the
grave, that he was alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity.
One evening, when the head of a large fish was served on the
royal table, he suddenly exclaimed that he beheld the angry
countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge,
and his mouth armed with long sharp teeth, which threatened
to devour him. The monarch instantly retired to his chamber,
and, as he lay trembling with aguish cold, under a weight of
bed-clothes, he expressed, in broken murmurs to his physician
Elpidius, his deep repentance for the murders of Boethius and
Symmachus."
" But if Constans could fly from the people, he could not
fly from himself. The remorse of his conscience created a
phantom, who pursued him by land and sea, by day and by
and the visionary Theodosius, presenting to his lips a
night j
cup of blood, said, or seemed to say, 'Drink, brother, drink;'
a sure emblem of the aggravation of his guilt, since he had
received from the hands of the deacon the mystic cup of the
blood of Christ." Gibbon.
42
( )
To me are like the wild notes of the swan,
That sings of coming summer to those isles
Amid the polar ocean. . .
p. 74.
"The singing of the swans on the neighbouring lakes,
added to the novelty of the scene." Dr. Henderson s Iceland.
The natives of Iceland compare the singing of the northern
swans to the notes of a violin. They are heard at the end of
their tedious and dismal winter, when the return of that bird
such sounds must there-
announces the approach of summer :
fore be indeed melodious to the Icelanders, which proclaim
their release from the long and gloomy horrors of an Arctic
winter.