But all was silent and lifeless. No person was to be discerned in the court to which it opened; there were no signs of life except in the cooing of some pigeons and the cawing of certain jackdaws. We went round the outbuildings into the churchyard, which is level with the top of the court-wall, and looks directly into it. We leaned over a massy parapet, and looked down into this court; the spell of an invincible silence seemed to cover the whole place. In the gravel walks which ran round the court, there were traces of carriage wheels; but you felt as if no carriage with the bustle and vivacity of active life could ever more enter there. In the centre of the grass-plot, a basin surrounded by a hedge of honeysuckle, and which had doubtless once possessed the life and beauty of a fountain, now shewed only water, black, stagnant, and covered with masses of yellow moss. We were close to the house; its curtained windows gave it an air of habitation; but no sound nor visible indication of the presence of man was about it. We walked along the green and picturesque churchyard: the back of the buildings on this side of the court bounded part of it; they were in the last state of decay; wide gaps in the roof gave us a view into dark and dreary stables. We came to the farm-yard, also joining the churchyard: it had the same aspect of desertion. There was neither cattle nor ricks in it, but the brandreth, or frame on which a rick once stood, littered with decaying straw, and its air of desolation made more striking by a piece of old wooden balustrade cast upon it. There were barn-doors standing wide open; and the litter of the yard even appeared dusty and grey with age. You felt sure no human foot could have disturbed it for years. We descended from the churchyard, and went round the farm-buildings once more towards the old “massy gate.” At the back of these buildings were nailed the trophies of the gamekeeper by hundreds, we might, we think, say thousands; wild cats, dried to blackness, stretched their downward heads and legs from the wall; hawks, magpies, and jays, hung in tattered remnants; but all grey and even green with age; and the heads of birds in plenteous rows, nailed beak upward, were dried and shrivelled by the sun, and winds, and frosts, of many summers and winters, till their distinctive characters were lost. They all seemed to speak the same silent language:--to say, Ay, this was once the abode of a prosperous old family; here were abundance of friends, and dependents going to and fro; horses and hounds going forth in vociferous joy; abroad was the chase and the sound of the gun,--within were spits turning, and good fellowship; but all this is long since over--a blight and a sorrow have fallen here.