ay
the palm.

My faith in legendary lore is confirmed, when I call to mind the Gothic
fortress, with its strong defences against the enemy, its rude
suggestions of centuries of hospitality, its tower-lattices, whence
generation after generation of high-born maids waved signals to knightly
lovers, its stairways, worn slippery with the tread of heavy-mailed
warriors, its chapel-vault, where chivalrous lord and noble dame have
turned to dust. But there is a faith more precious than the faith in old
song and legend; and the golden-haired child, who flourishes so fresh
and fair amidst all this ruin and decay, stands forth to my mind as an
emblem of that power which renovates earth and defies time. Had she been
a pattern child, had her instructors (whoever they were) succeeded in
moulding her into a mere machine, she might not so vividly have roused
my interest; but there was something in her saucy independence, her
wayward freaks, her coquettish airs, her fiery chase after the swallow,
which--breaking in, as they did, upon the docility with which she
otherwise went through her round of duty--revivified the desolation of
the old hall with a sudden outburst of humanity. Everywhere else the
fountain of life seemed to have died out, but here it gushed forth a
living stream.

We gaze down the centuries and see in them ignorance, error, warning,
and ruin at last. What hope for the race, then, if this were all? But it
is not all. The child's foot treading lightly over the graves is the
type of the _time-is_ triumphing over the _time-was_. Full of faults and
imperfections, she is still the daughter of Hope and Opportunity. She
has the past for her teacher, and the door of knowledge, repentance, and
faith stands open before her. Thus childhood is the rainbow of God's
providence, and the brightest feature of His covenant with men.

Silence, desolation, and decay have set their seal upon old Haddon Hall,
but chance has set a child over them all, and the lesson her simple
presence teaches is worth more to me than all the Idyls of the King.

And thus it is that I treasure up the memory of her among my catalogue
of guides; and so she did more for me than she promised, when she
undertook to lend me her light through the old Hall.

If there are any who can live without thus borrowing, then let them
disparage guides. For the rest, the best guide is Humility. We have all
so many dark paths to tread from the cradle to the grave, that we n