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