Roanoke of Roanoke Hall: A Romance — page 233: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Roanoke of Roanoke Hall. 227 remedied by reversing the picture, and with the aid of a magnifying glass I was able to. read them without difficulty. The passage seemed to be an extract from some history, and began in the middle of a sentence at the top of the page. It struck me as strange that the artist, whose work was in no way characterized by minuteness of detail, such as I have seen in pictures by those old painters out of Holland, should have been at the pains to copy the words so elaborately, even to the curious errors of printing which we find so often even now in our books. The matter itself, moreover, was so significant that I was certain there was some profound meaning in its selection. Thus it ran: ‘— it is reported that the Goths did Divert The river Vasento, a Stream of Calabria Above Cosenca. The purpose was Newe, not to make a ford, or build a Bridge, but to bury their commander Alaric, for which reason they did Digge a pit Beneath the river-bed, and did there inter It Secretly, where they did Find it most impetuous, and with the body Much gold and jewels, a great comichbooks.com