great house was inhabited; long
corridors and galleries stretched away in dust and silence, and were
crossed by others, whose dark arches inspired me in the distance with an
awful sort of sadness. It was plainly one of those great structures in
which you might easily lose yourself, and with a pleasing terror it
reminded me of that delightful old abbey in Mrs. Radcliffe's romance, among
whose silent staircases, dim passages, and long suites of lordly, but
forsaken chambers, begirt without by the sombre forest, the family of La
Mote secured a gloomy asylum.

My cousin Milly and I, however, were bent upon an open-air ramble, and
traversing several passages, she conducted me to a door which led us out
upon a terrace overgrown with weeds, and by a broad flight of steps we
descended to the level of the grounds beneath. Then on, over the short
grass, under the noble trees, we walked; Milly in high good-humour,
and talking away volubly, in her short garment, navvy boots, and a
weather-beaten hat. She carried a stick in her gloveless hand. Her
conversation was quite new to me, and resembled very much what I would have
fancied the holiday recollections of a schoolboy; and the language in which
it was sustained was sometimes so outlandish, that I was forced to laugh
outright--a demonstration which she plainly did not like.

Her talk was about the great jumps she had made--how she snow-balled the
chaps' in winter--how she could slide twice the length of her stick beyond
'Briddles, the cow-boy.'

With this and similar conversation she entertained me.

The grounds were delightfully wild and neglected. But we had now passed
into a vast park beautifully varied with hollows and uplands, and such
glorious old timber massed and scattered over its slopes and levels. Among
these, we got at last into a picturesque dingle; the grey rocks peeped from
among the ferns and wild flowers, and the steps of soft sward along its
sides were dark in the shadows of silver-stemmed birch, and russet thorn,
and oak, under which, in the vaporous night, the Erl-king and his daughter
might glide on their aerial horses.

In the lap of this pleasant dell were the finest blackberry bushes, I
think, I ever saw, bearing fruit quite fabulous; and plucking these, and
chatting, we rambled on very pleasantly.

I had first thought of Milly's absurdities, to which, in description, I
cannot do justice, simply because so many details have, by distance
of time, escap