usly
disposed, grew about in large patches. The breeze passed heavily by,
rustling the dark swathe, and murmuring fitfully as it departed.
Desolation seemed to have marked the spot for her own--the grim abode of
solitude and despair. During twenty years' sojourn in a strange land
memory had still, with untiring delight, painted the old mansion in all
its primeval primness and simplicity--fresh as I had left it, full of
buoyancy and delight, to take possession of the paradise which
imagination had created. I had, indeed, been informed that at my
father's death it became the habitation of a stranger; but no
intelligence as to its present condition had ever reached me. Being at
L----, and only some twenty miles distant, I could not resist the
temptation of once more gazing on the old Manor-house, and of comparing
its present aspect with that but too faithfully engrafted on my
recollections. To all appearance the house was tenantless. I tried the
door of a side kitchen or scullery: it was fastened, but the rusty bolts
yielded to no very forcible pressure; and I once more penetrated into
the kitchen, that exhaustless magazine which had furnished ham and eggs,
greens and bacon, with other sundry and necessary condiments, to the
progenitors of our race for at least two centuries. A marvellous
change!--to me it appeared as if wrought in a moment, so recently had
memory reinstated the scenes of my youth in all their pristine
splendour. Now no smoke rolled lazily away from the heavy billet; no
blaze greeted my sight; no savoury steam regaled the sense. Dark,
cheerless, cold,--the long bars emitted no radiance; the hearth unswept,
on which Growler once panted with heat and fatness.

Though night was fast approaching, I could not resist the temptation of
once more exploring the deserted chambers, the scene of many a youthful
frolic. I sprang with reckless facility up the vast staircase. The
shallow steps were not sufficiently accommodating to my impatience, and
I leapt rather than ran, with the intention of paying my first visit to
that _cockaigne_ of childhood, that paradise of little fools--the
nursery. How small, dwindled almost into a span, appeared that once
mighty and almost boundless apartment, every nook of which was a
separate territory, every drawer and cupboard the boundary of another
kingdom! three or four strides brought me to the window;--the broad
church-tower was still visible, peacefully reposing in the dim and hea