ty iron, curling and twisting
like a petrifaction of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikes
and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominous
extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!'
There were no talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but the
house was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings
and the pavement--particularly round the corner where the side wall
was--and drew ghosts on the stable door; and being sometimes driven off
by Mr Towlinson, made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing
out horizontally from under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the
shadow of the roof. The brass band that came into the street once a
week, in the morning, never brayed a note in at those windows; but all
such company, down to a poor little piping organ of weak intellect,
with an imbecile party of automaton dancers, waltzing in and out at
folding-doors, fell off from it with one accord, and shunned it as a
hopeless place.

The spell upon it was more wasting than the spell that used to set
enchanted houses sleeping once upon a time, but left their waking
freshness unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse was everywhere
silently manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping heavily,
lost their old folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. Hecatombs
of furniture, still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned and
forgotten men, and changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as with the
breath of years. Patterns of carpets faded and became perplexed and
faint, like the memory of those years' trifling incidents. Boards,
starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked and shook. Keys rusted in the
locks of doors. Damp started on the walls, and as the stains came out,
the pictures seemed to go in and secrete themselves. Mildew and mould
began to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners of the cellars.
Dust accumulated, nobody knew whence nor how; spiders, moths, and grubs
were heard of every day. An exploratory blackbeetle now and then was
found immovable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as wondering
how he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuffle in the night time,
through dark galleries they mined behind the panelling.

The dreary magnificence of the state rooms, seen imperfectly by the
doubtful light admitted through closed shutters, would have answered
well enough for an enchanted abode. Such as the tarnished paws of
gil