Rhineland (Germany) -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
The walk was very shady that led along the garden, and as it was now
long past eight o'clock, it was nearly dark walking there, though it was
still pretty light under the open sky. The walk gradually ascended, and
it soon brought the party to a place where they could see, rising up
among the trees, fragments of ancient walls of stupendous height. Rollo
looked up to them with wonder. He even felt a degree of awe, as well as
wonder, for the strange and uncouth forms of windows and doors, which
were seen here and there; the embrasures, and the yawning arches which
appeared below, leading apparently to subterranean dungeons, being all
dimly seen in the obscurity of the night, suggested to his mind ideas of
prisoners confined there in ancient times, and wearing out their lives
in a dreadful and hopeless captivity, or being put to death by horrid
tortures.
Minnie was still more afraid of these gloomy remains than Rollo. She was
afraid to look up at them.
"Look up there, Minnie," said Rollo. "See that old broken window with
iron gratings in the walls."
"No," replied Minnie, "I do not want to see it at all."
So saying she looked straight down upon the path before her, and walked
on as fast as possible.
"If I should look up there, I should see some dreadful thing mowing and
chowing at me," she added.
Rollo laughed, and they all walked on.
Presently the path began to ascend more rapidly, and soon it brought the
whole party out into the light, on the slope of an elevation which was
covered with the main body of the ruined castle. The man led the way up
a steep path, and then up a flight of ancient stone steps built against
a wall, until he came to an iron gateway. This he unlocked, and the
whole party went in, or rather went through, for as the roofs were gone
from the ruins, they were almost as much out of doors after passing
through the gateway as they were before.
Mr. George and the children gazed around upon the confused mass of
ruined bastions, towers, battlements, and archways, that lay before
them, with a feeling of awe which it is impossible to describe. The
grass waved and flowers bloomed on the tops of the walls, on the sills
of the windows, and on every projecting cornice, or angle, where a seed
could have lodged. In many places thick clusters of herbage were seen
growing luxuriantly from crumbling interstices of the stones in the
perpendicular face of the masonry, fifty feet from the ground. Large
trees were growing on what had formerly been the floors of the halls, or
of the chambers, and tall grass waved there, ready for the scythe.
There was one tower which still had a roof upon it. A steep flight of
stone steps led up to a door in this tower. The door was under a deep
archway. The guide led the way up this stairway, and unlocking the door,
admitted his party into the tower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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