I DO not knoleasure more affeg than te at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy: and plations on the great and good, whom we fan succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, inpatible with the bustle of modern occy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us betweeering ay and a crowded church. Iter it is ce but some present human frailty -- an act of iion on the part of some of the auditory -- or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of the preacher -- puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonising the plad the occasion. But wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness ? -- go alone on some week-day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some try church: think of the piety that has khere -- the gregations, old and young, that have found solation there -- the meek pastor -- the docile parishioner. With no disturbiions, no cross flig parisons, drink iranquillity of the place, till thou thyself bee as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I rised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down: still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnifice could not have been crushed all at oo the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to -- an antiquity.
I was asto the indistin of everything. Where had stood the great gates? What bouhe court-yard? Whereabout did the out-houses ence? a few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.
Had I seen these brid-mortar k their process of destru, at the plug of every pannel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful store-room, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plat before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary that ever hau about me -- it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a pannel of the yellow room.
Why, every plank and pannel of that house for me had magi it, The tapestried bed-rooms -- tapestry so much better than painting -- not ad merely, but peopling the wainscot -- at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender ce in a momentary eye-enter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally -- all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Actaeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana, and the still more provoking, and almost ary ess of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room -- in whirs. Battle died -- whereinto I have crept, but always in the day-time, with a passion of fear, and a sneaking curiosity, terror-taio hold unication with the past. -- How shall they build it up again?
It was no old deserted place, yet not so loed but th