It would be a strange anomaly in the
records of human opinions to find an edifice reared to perpetuate a
belief which the founder thought a delusion, a mere system of
priestcraft and superstition. To this prominent feature in his history
our attention has been directed, and we think the following tradition
assigns a better and more plausible motive for the founding of that
beautiful structure, the chapel at Hornby.
It was by the still light of a cloudless harvest-moon that two men
appeared to be sauntering up the stream that winds through the vale near
Hornby. One of them wore a clerical habit, and the other, from his
dress, seemed to attend in the capacity of a menial. They rested at the
foot of a steep cliff overhung with firs and copse-wood. The castle,
upon the summit, with its tall and narrow tower, like a feather stuck in
its crown, was not visible from where they sat. The moon threw an
unclouded lustre from her broad full face far away over the wide and
heavy woods by which they were surrounded. A shallow bend of the stream
towards the left glittered over its bed like molten silver, issuing from
a dark and deep pool shaded by the jutting boughs and grim-visaged rocks
from whence they hung.
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