en occupied by a superb
mirror, reaching from the cornice of the ceiling.

Nearly in the centre of this mirror, however, there was a small
circular fracture, as if made by a stone or a bullet, with long cracks
radiating, like the beams of a star, in all directions over the
shivered plate; and when I looked at it more closely, I observed that
it was dashed in many places with large drops of some dark purple
fluid, which had hardened with time into compact and solid gouts.

I thought little of this at the time, and only wondered why people
could be so mad as to abandon so beautiful a place; and why, since
they had abandoned it, they did not remove the furniture, of which
even a boy's eye could detect the value.

There was a centre-table of circular form, the pedestal of which,
curiously carved, had been wrought, like all the rest, in gold and
azure, while the slat, when I had wiped away with some fresh green
leaves the thick layer of dust which covered it, positively astonished
my eyes, by the delicacy and beauty of the designs with which it was
adorned. Beside this, there were divans and arm-chairs of the same
fashion and colors, with cushions which had been once of sky-blue
damask, though their brilliancy, and even their hues, had long ago
been defaced by the dust, the dampness, and the squalor of that
neglected place.

I should have mentioned, that on the beautiful table I discovered
gouts of the same dark substance which I had previously observed on
the broken mirror: and that there were still clearly perceptible on
one of the divans, dark splashes, and what must, when fluid, have been
almost a pool of the same deep, rusty hue.

At the time, it is true, I paid little attention to these things,
being busily employed in the boy-like idea of putting my newly
discovered palace of Armida into a complete state of repair, and
coming to pass all my leisure moments, even to the studying my
Prometheus Bound, and composing my weekly hexameters and Alcaics in
this sweet sequestered spot.

And, in truth, within a week I had put the greater part of my plan
into execution; purloined dusters from my dame's boarding-house, green
boughs of the old elms for brooms, and water from the ditch, soon made
things clean at least; and the air, which I suffered, so long as I was
there, daily, to blow through it in all directions, soon rendered it,
comparatively speaking, dry and comfortable; and when all its windows
were thrown wide, it