ll,
there really was something philosophical in the romance of the jovial
gypsy, childish as it seemed; and I should like much to know if the
philosophy has got the better of the romance, or the romance, growing
into habit, become commonplace and lost both its philosophy and its
enthusiasm. Well, after I leave Mordaunt, I will try and find out my old
friend."

With this resolution Clarence's thoughts took a new channel, and he soon
entered upon Mordaunt's domain. As he rode through the park where brake
and tree were glowing in the yellow tints which Autumn, like Ambition,
gilds ere it withers, he paused for a moment to recall the scene as he
last beheld it. It was then spring--spring in its first and flushest
glory--when not a blade of grass but sent a perfume to the air, the
happy air,--

"Making sweet music while the young leaves danced:"

when every cluster of the brown fern, that now lay dull and motionless
around him, and amidst which the melancholy deer stood afar off gazing
upon the intruder, was vocal with the blithe melodies of the infant
year,--the sharp, yet sweet, voices of birds,--and (heard at intervals)
the chirp of the merry grasshopper or the hum of the awakened bee. He
sighed, as he now looked around, and recalled the change both of time
and season; and with that fondness of heart which causes man to knit his
own little life to the varieties of time, the signs of heaven, or the
revolutions of Nature, he recognized something kindred in the change of
scene to the change of thought and feeling which years had wrought in
the beholder.

Awaking from his revery, he hastened his horse's pace, and was soon
within sight of the house. Vavasour, during the few years he had
possessed the place, had conducted and carried through improvements and
additions to the old mansion, upon a scale equally costly and judicious.
The heavy and motley magnificence of the architecture in which the house
had been built remained unaltered; but a wing on either side, though
exactly corresponding in style to the intermediate building, gave, by
the long colonnade which ran across the one and the stately windows
which adorned the other, an air not only of grander extent, but more
cheerful lightness to the massy and antiquated pile. It was, assuredly,
in the point of view by which Clarence now approached it, a structure
which possessed few superiors in point of size and effect; and
harmonized so well with the nobly extent of the