Of that House--to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings--with its old ivyed turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and with flowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed its foundations has vanished along with them--and a crowd of other buildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a single tree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne; which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even for one moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and we ourselves--then so linked in love that the band which bound us altogether was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood--to be scattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wild parting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and brought together no more! The old Abbey--it still survives; and there, in that corner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which was last in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers and nests--there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved and Venerated--for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years have fled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly to have ceased to weep--so seldom to have remembered!--And then, with a powerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, the floods we all wept together--at no long interval--on those pale and placid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, in their coffins.