eir
neglected appearance plainly tells that there is nobody at home.

A stupid kind of sadness, to my eye, always reigns in a huge habitation
where only servants live to put cases on the furniture and open the
windows. I enter as I would into the tomb of the Capulets, to look at
the family pictures that here frown in armour, or smile in ermine. The
mildew respects not the lordly robe, and the worm riots unchecked on the
cheek of beauty.

There was nothing in the architecture of the building, or the form of the
furniture, to detain me from the avenue where the aged pines stretched
along majestically. Time had given a greyish cast to their ever-green
foliage; and they stood, like sires of the forest, sheltered on all sides
by a rising progeny. I had not ever seen so many oaks together in Norway
as in these woods, nor such large aspens as here were agitated by the
breeze, rendering the wind audible--nay musical; for melody seemed on the
wing around me. How different was the fresh odour that reanimated me in
the avenue, from the damp chillness of the apartments; and as little did
the gloomy thoughtfulness excited by the dusty hangings, and worm-eaten
pictures, resemble the reveries inspired by the soothing melancholy of
their shade. In the winter, these august pines, towering above the snow,
must relieve the eye beyond measure and give life to the white waste.

The continual recurrence of pine and fir groves in the day sometimes
wearies the sight, but in the evening, nothing can be more picturesque,
or, more properly speaking, better calculated to produce poetical images.
Passing through them, I have been struck with a mystic kind of reverence,
and I did, as it were, homage to their venerable shadows. Not nymphs,
but philosophers, seemed to inhabit them--ever musing; I could scarcely
conceive that they were without some consciousness of existence--without
a calm enjoyment of the pleasure they diffused.

How often do my feelings produce ideas that remind me of the origin of
many poetical fictions. In solitude, the imagination bodies forth its
conceptions unrestrained, and stops enraptured to adore the beings of its
own creation. These are moments of bliss; and the memory recalls them
with delight.

But I have almost forgotten the matters of fact I meant to relate,
respecting the counts. They have the presentation of the livings on
their estates, appoint the judges, and different civil officers, the
Crown reser