Armed with these instructions, as soon as we had finished our breakfast we started across the fields, and after a pleasant walk of twenty minutes we found ourselves in an old churchyard, amongst a cluster of the most picturesque ruins we had ever seen. With the exception of the grey tower, which we had espied from the inn, and which had doubtless been the belfry, the remains were not considerable. There was the outer wall of the chancel, and the broken step that had led to the high altar, and there were sections of aisles, and part of a cloister, all gracefully festooned with mosses and ivy; whilst mingled with the grass-grown graves of the prosaic dead, there were the massive tombs of the Dame Margerys and the Sir Hildebrands of more romantic periods. All was ruin and decay; but such poetic ruin! such picturesque decay! And just beyond the tall grey tower, there was the loveliest, smiling, little garden, and the prettiest cottage, that imagination could picture. The day was so bright, the grass so green, the flowers so gay, the air so balmy with their sweet perfumes, the birds sang so cheerily in the apple and cherry trees, that all nature seemed rejoicing. ‘Well,’ said my friend, as she seated herself on the fragment of a pillar, and looked around her, ‘now that I see this place, I understand the sort of people the Lovells were.’ ‘What sort of people were they?’ said I. ‘Why, as I said before, interesting people. In the first place, they were both extremely handsome.’ ‘But the locality had nothing to do with their good looks, I presume,’ said I. ‘I am not sure of that,’ she answered; ‘when there is the least foundation of taste or intellect to set out with, the beauty of external nature, and the picturesque accidents that harmonise with it, do, I am persuaded, by their gentle and elevating influences on the mind, make the handsome handsomer, and the ugly less ugly. But it was not alone the good looks of the Lovells that struck me, but their air of refinement and high breeding, and I should say high birth—though I know nothing about their extraction—combined with their undisguised poverty and as evident contentment. Now, I can understand such people finding here an appropriate home, and being satisfied with their small share of this world’s goods; because here the dreams of romance writers about Love in a Cottage might be somewhat realised; poverty might be graceful and poetical here; and then, you know, they have no rent to pay.’ ‘Very true,’ said I; ‘but suppose they had sixteen daughters, like a half-pay officer I once met on board a steam-packet?’ ‘That would spoil it certainly,’ said Mrs. Markham; ‘but let us hope they have not. When I knew them they had only two children, a boy and a girl, called Charles and Emily; two of the prettiest creatures I ever beheld!’