She cared nothing at all for us. All the interest we had manifested in
her (and it was considerable) had failed to awaken any emotion. We were
a stereotyped feature of the old hall; and the old hall, though she had
sprung from its root, and her life had been nourished by its strength,
was no part of herself,--was her antipathy. Still I never think of the
mansion, with all the romantic associations which cluster around it, but
the image of this child comes to break my reverie, as she did on the day
when it was first indulged.
So we go to visit some royal oak, and bring away, as a memento, the
daisy which blooms at its foot; so we stand, as the reward of toil and
fatigue, upon an Alpine glacier, and the trophy and pledge of our visit
are the forget-me-not that grew on its margin. Thus youth and beauty
ever press on the footsteps of old age, and youth and beauty bear away
the palm.
My faith in legendary lore is confirmed, when I call to mind the Gothic
fortress, with its strong defences against the enemy, its rude
suggestions of centuries of hospitality, its tower-lattices, whence
generation after generation of high-born maids waved signals to knightly
lovers, its stairways, worn slippery with the tread of heavy-mailed
warriors, its chapel-vault, where chivalrous lord and noble dame have
turned to dust.
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