n
the world. The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by the gray
castle, may have held their images in its bosom.

The day, though it began brightly, had long been overcast, and the
clouds now spat down a few spiteful drops upon us, besides that the
east-wind was very chill; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and
went next into the garden, one side of which is shut in by almost the
only remaining portion of the old city-wall. A part of the garden-ground
is devoted to grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, in the
centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase of Egyptian sculpture,
having formerly stood on the top of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar
for measuring the rise and fall of the River Nile. On the pedestal is
a Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of Hatton being so
close at hand) was probably often the Master's guest, and smoked his
interminable pipe along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden,
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated to the Master, and
twelve small, separate patches to the individual brethren, who cultivate
them at their own judgment and by their own labor; and their beans
and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt not, than if they had
received them directly from the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like
the rest of their food. In the farther part of the garden is an arbor
for the old men's pleasure and convenience, and I should like well to
sit down among them there, and find out what is really the bitter and
the sweet of such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen themselves,
they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Custom-House, and the venerable
personages whom I found so quietly at anchor there.

The Master's residence, forming one entire side of the quadrangle,
fronts on the garden, and wears an aspect at once stately and homely.
It can hardly have undergone any perceptible change with in three
centuries; but the garden, into which its old windows look, has probably
put off a great many eccentricities and quaintnesses, in the way of
cunningly clipped shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's
reign threw down his rusty shears and took his departure. The present
Master's name is Harris; he is a descendant of the founder's family, a
gentleman of independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Established
Church, as the regulations of the hospital require him to be. I know
not what are his official emoluments; but,