gradually into smaller space, with occasional Sabbath glimpses of the
living rulers of Oldenhurst already in railed-off exaltation, it had
forced them to accept Oldenhurst as a synonym of eternity, and left the
knowledge of a higher Power to what time they should be turned out
to their longer sleep under the tender grass of the beautiful outer
churchyard.

And even so, while every stone of the pile of Oldenhurst and every tree
in its leafy park might have been eloquent with the story of vanity,
selfishness, and unequal justice, it had been left to the infinite mercy
of Nature to seal their lips with a spell of beauty that left mankind
equally dumb; earth, air, and moisture had entered into a gentle
conspiracy to soften, mellow, and clothe its external blemishes of
breach and accident, its irregular design, its additions, accretions,
ruins, and lapses with a harmonious charm of outline and color; poets,
romancers, and historians had equally conspired to illuminate the
dark passages and uglier inconsistencies of its interior life with the
glamour of their own fancy. The fragment of menacing keep, with its
choked oubliettes, became a bower of tender ivy; the grim story of its
crimes, properly edited by a contemporary bard of the family, passed
into a charming ballad. Even the superstitious darkness of its religious
house had escaped through fallen roof and shattered wall, leaving only
the foliated and sun-pierced screen of front, with its rose-window and
pinnacle of cross behind. Pilgrims from all lands had come to see
it; fierce Republicans had crossed the seas to gaze at its mediaeval
outlines, and copy them in wood and stucco on their younger soil.
Politicians had equally pointed to it as a convincing evidence of their
own principles and in refutation of each other; and it had survived
both. For it was this belief in its own perpetuity that was its strength
and weakness. And that belief was never stronger than on this bright