into great bushes, or rather dwarf-trees, and now encroached, with their
dark and melancholy boughs, upon the road which they once had screened.
The avenue itself was grown up with grass, and, in one or two places,
interrupted by piles of withered brushwood, which had been lopped from
the trees cut down in the neighbouring park, and was here stacked for
drying. Formal walks and avenues, which, at different points, crossed
this principal approach, were, in like manner, choked up and interrupted
by piles of brushwood and billets, and in other places by underwood and
brambles. Besides the general effect of desolation which is so strongly
impressed whenever we behold the contrivances of man wasted and
obliterated by neglect, and witness the marks of social life effaced
gradually by the influence of vegetation, the size of the trees and the
outspreading extent of their boughs diffused a gloom over the scene,
even when the sun was at the highest, and made a proportional impression
on the mind of those who visited it. This was felt even by Michael
Lambourne, however alien his habits were to receiving any impressions,
excepting from things which addressed themselves immediately to his
passions.

"This wood is as dark as a wolf's mouth," said he to Tressilian, as they
walked together slowly along the solitary and broken approach, and had
just come in sight of the monastic front of the old mansion, with its
shafted windows, brick walls overgrown with ivy and creeping shrubs,
and twisted stalks of chimneys of heavy stone-work. "And yet," continued
Lambourne, "it is fairly done on the part of Foster too for since he
chooses not visitors, it is right to keep his place in a fashion that
will invite few to trespass upon his privacy. But had he been the
Anthony I once knew him, these sturdy oaks had long since become the
property of some honest woodmonger, and the manor-close here had looked
lighter at midnight than it now does at noon, while Foster played fast