In "Blakesmoor in H-----shire," British essayist Charles Lamb (thinly disguised as the narrator Elia) returns to the great country house where his grandmother had been a housekeeper and which he had visited as a child. Now abandoned, this "lonely temple" serves as an emblem of the transience of all human things.
Blakesmoor in H-----shire
by Charles Lamb
I do not know a pleasure more affecting than to range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur admit of a better passion than envy; and contemplations on the great and good, whom we fancy in succession to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same difference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty--an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory--or a trait of affectation, or, worse, vainglory, on that of the preacher--puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. But would'st thou know the beauty of holiness? --go alone on some weekday, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church; think of the piety that has kneeled ther--the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there--the meek pastor--the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquility of the place, till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee.
Journeying northward lately, I could not resist going some few miles out of my road to look upon the remains of an old great house with which I had been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised that the owner of it had lately pulled it down; still I had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, that so much solidity with magnificence could not have been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish which I found it.
The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced it to--an antiquity.
I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. Where had stood the great gates? What bounded the courtyard? Whereabout did the outhouses commence? a few bricks only lay as representatives of that which was so stately and so spacious.
Death does not shrink up his human victim at this rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their proportion.
Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp that ever haunted it about me--it is in mine ears now, as oft as summer returns; or a panel of the yellow room.
Why, every plank and panel of that house for me had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms--tapestry so much better than painting--not adorning merely, but peopling the wainscots--at which childhood ever and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlet (replaced as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright visages, staring reciprocally--all Ovid on the walls, in colours vivider than his descriptions. Actaeon in mid sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana; and the still more provoking and almost culinary coolness of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of Marsyas.
Then, that haunted room--in which old Mrs. Battle died--whereinto I have crept, but always in the daytime, with a passion of fear, and a sneaking curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with the past. How shall they build it up again?
It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing--even to the tarnished gilt leather battledoors, and crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, which told that children had once played there. But I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of every apartment, knew every nook and corner, wondered and worshipped everywhere.
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