The coach set me down at the entrance to a long and unweeded avenue. A
double row of beech-trees saluted me, as I passed, with a rich shower of
wet leaves, and shook their bare arms, growling as the loud sough of the
wind went through their decayed branches. The old house was before me.
Its numerous and irregularly-contrived compartments in front were
streaked in black and white zig-zags--_vandyked_, I think, the fairest
jewels of the creation call this chaste and elegant ornament. It was
near the close of a dark autumnal day, and a mass of gable-ends stood
sharp and erect against the wild and lowering sky. Each of these
pinnacles could once boast of its admired and appropriate ornament--a
little weathercock; but they had cast off their gilded plumage for ever,
and fallen from their high estate, like the once neatly-trimmed mansion
which I was now visiting. A magpie was perched upon a huge stack of
chimneys, his black and white plumage rivalling the mottled edifice at
his feet. Perhaps he was the wraith, the departing vision of the
decaying fabric; an apparition, insubstantial as the honours and
dignities of the ancient and revered house of----!
I looked eagerly at the long, low casements: a faint glimmer was
visible.
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