sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed here;
Bleste be ye man yt spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

Under such anathema the body has slept securely. A sexton once looked in at
the bones, but did not dare to touch them, lest his "quietus" should be
made with a bare bodkin.

From the church door we mounted our carriage; and crossing the Avon on a
bridge which the lord mayor of London built four hundred years ago, we
start on one of the most memorable rides of our life. The country looked
fresh and luxuriant from recent rains. The close-trimmed hedges, the sleek
cattle, the snug cottages, the straggling villages with their historic
inns, the castle from whose park Shakspeare stole the deer, the gate called
"Shakspeare's stile," curious in the fact that it looks like ordinary bars
of fence, but as you attempt to climb over, the whole thing gives way, and
lets you fall flat, righting itself as soon as it is unburdened of you; the
rabbits darting along the hedges, undisturbed, because it is unlawful, save
for licensed hunters, to shoot, and then not on private property; the
perfect weather, the blue sky, the exhilarating breeze, the glorious elms
and oaks by the way,--make it a day that will live when most other days are
dead.

At two o'clock we came in sight of Kenilworth Castle. Oh, this is the place
to stir the blood. It is the king of ruins. Warwick is nothing; Melrose is
nothing, compared with it. A thousand great facts look out through the
broken windows. Earls and kings and queens sit along the shattered sides of
the banqueting halls. The stairs are worn deep with the feet that have
clambered them for eight hundred years. As a loving daughter arranges the
dress of an old man, so every season throws a thick mantle of ivy over the
mouldering wall. The roof that caught and echoed back the merriment of dead
ages has perished. Time has struck his chisel into every inch of the
structure. By the payment of only three-pence you find access to places
where only the titled were once permitted to walk. You go in, and are
overwhelmed with the thoughts of past glory and present decay. These halls
were promenaded by Richard Coeur de Lion; in this chapel burned the tomb
lights over the grave of Geoffrey de Clinton; in these dungeons kings
groaned; in these doorways duchesses fainted. Scene of gold, and silver,
and scroll work, and chiseled arch, and mosaic. Here were heard the
carousals of the Round