entireness of the rich and massive front.

The story of that ruin--for such it is--is always to me singularly
affecting. It is that of the decay of an ancient and distinguished
family, gradually reduced from the highest wealth and station to actual
poverty. The house and park, and a small estate around it, were entailed
on a distant cousin, and could not be alienated; and the late owner,
the last of his name and lineage, after long struggling with debt and
difficulty, farming his own lands, and clinging to his magnificent home
with a love of place almost as tenacious as that of the younger Foscari,
was at last forced to abandon it, retired to a paltry lodging in a
paltry town, and died there about twenty years ago, broken-hearted.
His successor, bound by no ties of association to the spot, and rightly
judging the residence to be much too large for the diminished estate,
immediately sold the superb fixtures, and would have entirely taken down
the house, if, on making the attempt, the masonry had not been found
so solid that the materials were not worth the labour. A great part,
however, of one side is laid open, and the splendid chambers, with their
carving and gilding, are exposed to the wind and rain--sad memorials
of past grandeur! The grounds have been left in a merciful neglect; the
park, indeed, is broken up, the lawn mown twice a year like a common
hayfield, the grotto mouldering into ruin, and the fishponds choked
with rushes and aquatic plants; but the shrubs and flowering trees are
undestroyed, and have grown into a magnificence of size and wildness of
beauty, such as we may imagine them to attain in their native forests.
Nothing can exceed their luxuriance, especially in the spring, when
the lilac, and laburnum, and double-cherry put forth their gorgeous
blossoms. There is a sweet sadness in the sight of such floweriness
amidst such desolation; it seems the triumph of nature over the
destructive power of man. The whole place, in that season more
particularly, is full of a soft and soothing melancholy, reminding me, I
scarcely know why, of some of the descriptions of natural scenery in the
novels of Charlotte Smith, which I read when a girl, and which, perhaps,
for that reason hang on my memory.

But here we are, in the smooth grassy ride, on the top of a steep turfy
slope descending to the river, crowned with enormous firs and limes of
equal growth, looking across the winding waters into a sweet peaceful
land