The travellers made their way among the briers to take a nearer view of it; and, if verdant festoons of younger plants had charmed them, Willoughton, at least, was no less affected by the withered sinews and grey locks of this most forlorn and aged tree, which had itself become a ruin, while adorning another. He climbed over hillocks of briers and weeds, which now covered the ruins of walls, fallen into this court-yard, and he looked down into the area of the great hall, through a door-way which had once led from it by a vestibule towards the white hall, of which latter hardly a vestige remains, and to King Henry’s lodgings. Here he distinguished the upper end of that magnificent banqueting-room, the very spot where the _deis_, or high table, had stood, which had feasted kings and princes, its lords, or visitors; where Henry the Third had sitten, where John O’Gaunt had caroused, and where Elizabeth had received the homage of Leicester. At one end of this platform were still the remains of the large bay-window, opening upon the grand court, where the cup-board had stood, and the golden plate was piled; at the other end, a windowed recess bowed out towards the spot, where there had been a lake, and to woods, that still flourished. This also, on state occasions, had probably held a plate-board, or cup-board, and, on others, had been occupied as a pleasant seat, commanding the finest views of the park. The four walls only of this noble hall marked its former grandeur, not a fragment of either roof, or floor, remaining; the ground, upon which Willoughton immediately looked, having been the foundation of a chamber, or hall, for domestic and inferior guests, under the great one, which was eighty-six feet in length, and forty-five in width. Those walls, where gorgeous tapestry had hung, showed only the remains of doorways and of beautiful gothic windows, that had admitted the light of the same sun, which at this moment sent the last gleam of another day upon Willoughton, and warned him, that another portion of his life too was departing. The melancholy scene around him spoke, with the simplicity of truth, the brevity and nothingness of this life. Those walls seemed to say—“Generations have beheld us and passed away, as you now behold us, and shall pass away. They have thought of the generations before their time, as you now think of _them_, and as future ones shall think of you. The voices, that revelled beneath us, the pomp of power, the magnificence of wealth, the grace of beauty, the joy of hope, the interests of high passion and of low pursuits have passed from this scene for ever; yet we remain, the spectres of departed years and shall remain, feeble as we are, when you, who now gaze upon us, shall have ceased to be in this world!”