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 heavy
twilight. The evening-bell was tolling: what a host of recollections
were awakened at the sound! Days and hours long forgotten seemed to rise
up at its voice, like the spirits of the departed sweeping by, awful and
indistinct. These impressions soon became more vivid; they rushed on
with greater rapidity: I turned from the window, and was startled at the
sudden moving of a shadow. It was a faint long-drawn figure of myself on
the floor and opposite wall. Ashamed of my fears, I was preparing to
quit the apartment when my attention was arrested by a drawing which I
had once scrawled, and stuck against the wall with all the ardour of a
first achievement. It owed its preservation to an unlucky, but
effectual, contrivance of mine for securing its perpetuity: a
paste-brush, purloined from the kitchen, had made all fast; and the
piece, alike impregnable to assaults or siege, withstood every effort
for its removal.
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