Besides these, were many others calculated to awaken in the thoughtful mind both sweet and bitter fancies. How often have I walked up and down this noble gallery lost in "commiserating reveries" on the vicissitudes of departed grandeur!--on the nothingness of all that life could give!--on the fate of youthful beauties who lived to be broken-hearted, grow old, and die!--on heroes that once walked the earth in the blaze of their fame, now gone down to dust, and an endless darkness!--on bright faces, "petries de lis et de roses," since time-wrinkled!--on noble forms since mangled in the battle-field!--on high-born heads that fell beneath the axe of the executioner!--O ye starred and ribboned! ye jewelled and embroidered! ye wise, rich, great, noble, brave, and beautiful, of all your loves and smiles, your graces and excellencies, your deeds and honours--does then a "painted board circumscribe all?" ALTHORPE. A FRAGMENT. It was on such a day as I have seen in Italy in the month of December, but which, in our chill climate, seemed so unseasonably, so ominously beautiful, that it was like the hectic loveliness brightening the eyes and flushing the cheek of consumption,--that I found myself in the domains of Althorpe. Autumn, dying in the lap of Winter, looked out with one bright parting smile;--the soft air breathed of Summer; the withered leaves, heaped on the path, told a different tale. The slant, pale sun shone out with all heaven to himself; not a cloud was there, not a breeze to stir the leafless woods--those venerable woods, which Evelyn loved and commemorated:[67] the fine majestic old oaks, scattered over the park, tossed their huge bare arms against the blue sky; a thin hoar frost, dissolving as the sun rose higher, left the lawns and hills sparkling and glancing in its ray; now and then a hare raced across the open glade-- "And with her feet she from the plashy earth Raises a mist, which glittering in the sun, Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run." Nothing disturbed the serene stillness except a pheasant whirring from a neighbouring thicket, or at intervals the belling of the deer--a sound so peculiar, and so fitted to the scene, that I sympathized in the taste of one of the noble progenitors of the Spencers, who had built a hunting-lodge in a sequestered spot, that he might hear "the harte bell."