returned, and thy change is like our own: the green leaves of
_thy_ heart have fallen from thee one by one; like us thou survivest,
but thou art desolate!" The hoarse cry of the rooks, gathering to their
rest, came fraught with the music of young associations on my ear. Many
a time in the laughing spring had I lain in these groves, watching, in
the young brood of those citizens of air, a mark for my childish skill
and careless disregard of life. We acquire mercy as we acquire thought:
I would not _now_ have harmed one of those sable creatures for a king's
ransom!

As we cleared the more wooded belt of the park, and entered the smooth
space, on which the trees stood alone and at rarer intervals, while the
red clouds, still tinged with the hues of the departed sun, hovered
on the far and upland landscape,--like Hope flushing over Futurity,--a
mellowed yet rapid murmur, distinct from the more distant dashing of the
sea, broke abruptly upon my ear. It was the voice of that brook whose
banks had been the dearest haunt of my childhood; and now, as it burst
thus suddenly upon me, I longed to be alone, that I might have bowed
down my head and wept as if it had been the welcome of a living thing!
At once, and as by a word, the hardened lava, the congealed stream of
the soul's Etna, was uplifted from my memory, and the bowers and
palaces of old, the world of a gone day, lay before me! With how wild an
enthusiasm had I apostrophized that stream on the day in which I first
resolved to leave its tranquil regions and fragrant margin for the
tempest and tumult of the world. On that same eve, too, had Aubrey and I
taken sweet counsel together; on that same eve had we sworn to protect,
to love, and to cherish one another!--AND NOW!--I saw the very mound
on which we had sat,--a solitary deer made it his couch, and, as the
carriage approached, the deer rose, and then I saw that he had been
wounded, perhaps in some contest with his tribe, and that he could
scarcely stir from the spot. I turned my face away, and the remains
of my ancestral house rose gradually in view. That house was indeed
changed; a wide and black heap of ruins spread around; the vast hall,
with its oaken rafters and huge hearth, was no more,--I missed _that_,
and I cared not for the rest. The long galleries, the superb chambers,
the scenes of revelry or of pomp, were like the court companions
who amuse, yet attach us not; but the hall, the old hall,--the old,
hospitable