it is possible to enter also by the other.

Blonay, originally, must have been a hold of no great importance, as
neither the magnitude, strength, nor position of the older parts, is
sufficient to render the place one to be seriously assailed or
obstinately defended. Without knowing the fact, I infer that its
present interest arises from its great antiquity, coupled with the
circumstance of its having been possessed by the same family for so long
a period. Admitting a new owner for each five-and-twenty years, the
present must be somewhere about the twenty-fifth De Blonay who has lived
on this spot!

A common housemaid showed us through the building, but, unfortunately,
to her it was a house whose interest depended altogether on the number
of floors there were to be scrubbed, and windows to be cleaned. This
labour-saving sentiment destroys a great deal of excellent poetry and
wholesome feeling, reducing all that is venerable and romantic to the
level of soap and house-cloths. I dare say one could find many more
comfortable residences than this, within a league of Vevey; perhaps "Mon
Repos" has the advantage of it, in this respect: but there must be a
constant, quiet, and enduring satisfaction, with one whose mind is
properly trained, in reflecting that he is moving, daily and hourly,
through halls that have been trodden by his fathers for near a thousand
years! Hope is a livelier, and, on the whole, a more useful, because a
more stimulating, feeling, than that connected with memory; but there is
a solemn and pleasing interest clinging about the latter, that no
buoyancy of the first can ever equal. Europe is fertile of
recollections; America is pregnant with hope. I have tried hard, aided
by the love which is quickened by distance, as well as by the
observations that are naturally the offspring of comparison, to draw
such pictures of the latter for the future, as may supplant the pictures
of the past that so constantly rise before the mind in this quarter of
the world; but, though reasonably ingenious in castle-building, I have
never been able to make it out. I believe laziness lies at the bottom of
the difficulty. In our moments of enjoyment we prefer being led, to
racking the brain for invention. The past is a fact; while, at the best,
the future is only conjecture. In this case the positive prevails over
the assumed, and the imagination finds both and easier duty, and all it
wants, in throwing around the stores of memo