“My good friend here,” said Willoughton, “will order the chaise round to the gate where it set us down; and, by the time it arrives, I shall have seen what I wish to see.” “Be it so,” said Mr. Simpson, with an air of resignation; “one is sure of you when a journey is to be begun; but never when one would end, or hasten it. I have not forgotten our midnight rambles about Stonehenge! Doubtless we were the first human beings, who had appeared there, at such an hour, for many centuries; and what astonished me afterwards, more than any thing I saw, was, that I myself should have been conjured there at such an unseasonable hour; I, whose brain never hatched any of those ‘high and unimaginable fantasies,’ as your poet Gray calls them, ‘which distract the heads of some of his readers.’” “Ay! those shadows of the moon at full,” said Willoughton laughing, as they walked towards the ruin, his friend remonstrating with him on the imprudence of this passion for antiquities and on his credulity. “And can you really hold,” said he, “that these books were found in the manner related; and that any of them, especially the ‘Boke of Sprites,’ ever belonged to the library of the priory?” “It does not seem probable,” replied Willoughton, “that the old man should have invented the story he has related of the discovery of them; but, be that as it may, the books themselves announce their own genuine antiquity. The manuscript is laboriously illuminated, and it is well known, that such works were chiefly performed by the inhabitants of monasteries. The Boke of Sprites even was likely to have served the purposes of the monks. We know that the libraries of monasteries contained a most heterogeneous assemblage: Ovid, the Romance of Charlemagne, Guy of Warwick, and the Rimes of Robin Hood, have been found on the shelf with Homilies, and other books; which, although they might be tinged with the corruptions of the Papal school, ought not to have had such companions. You may recollect, that Warton, in the interesting sketches of ancient manners which he gives in his History of English Poetry, mentions this very fully; and that, among others, the library of Peterborough contained ‘Amys and Amdion,’ ‘Sir Tristram Merlin’s Prophecies,’ and the ‘Destruction of Troy:’ and books of this sort were not only copied, but often invented by the monks, sometimes for their amusement, sometimes for worse purposes.” “One of the old books you have relates to their castle, I think,” said Mr. Simpson, looking up at the shadowy masses; which, shown thus faintly by the rising moon, seemed more majestic than before. “Yes, and I perceive,” continued Willoughton, “that even you feel a curiosity to know what may have passed so many ages back, on the spot we now stand upon.”