Now he sinks to the cliff edge, and hangs quivering, supported, like
a kite, by the pressure of his breast and long curved wings, against
the breeze.
There he hangs, the peregrine--a true 'falcon gentle,' 'sharp-
notched, long-taloned, crooked-winged,' whose uncles and cousins,
ages since, have struck at duck and pheasant, and sat upon the wrists
of kings. And now he is full proud of any mouse or cliff-lark; like
an old Chingachgook, last of the Mohicans, he lingers round 'the
hunting-field of his fathers.' So all things end.
'The old order changeth, giving place to the new;
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.'
'Ay, and the day may come,' said Claude, 'when the brows of that huge
High Vere shall be crowned with golden wheat, and every rock-ledge on
Trentishoe, like those of Petra and the Rhine, support its garden-bed
of artificial soil.'
'And when,' I answered, 'the shingly sides of that great chasm of
Headon's Mouth may be clothed with the white mulberry, and the summer
limestone-skiffs shall go back freighted with fabrics which vie with
the finest woof of Italy and Lyons.
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