A shade of peculiar solemnity passed over my friend's countenance, as Hallings concluded his brief soliloquy, and both of them became so profoundly silent, sympathetically affected as it seemed by the same shuddering recollections, that the infection partly extended itself to me, ignorant as I was of the particular circumstances of their painful retrospect, and the words died on my lips as I was about to inquire Hallings' meaning in alluding to the "hard man, whose house had been raised on the ruins of his master's." I could not for worlds have broken into the sacredness of their silent thoughts; so, without further interchange of words, we quietly pursued our pleasant path, till it brought us to a boundary of thick hazel copse, across a stile, and over a rustic bridge, which spanned a little trout-stream just glancing between the boughs of over-arching alders, to a green door in a high holly hedge. While Hallings stept before us to undo the temporary fastening with which the workmen had secured it for the night, my friend, aroused from his fit of abstraction, said, pointing to the hedge, "I remember the time when that verdant wall, now straggling into wild luxuriance, was as trimly kept as were those of Sayes Court, before the barbarous sport of Evelyn's imperial guest destroyed his labour of years. Neglect is making progress here, destructive as that royal havoc, though more gradual."
Our venerable conductor having unfastened the door while L---- was speaking, we passed into a square enclosure, or rather area; for though still bounded on three sides by the noble evergreen hedge, it was open on the fourth to a dreary site of demolished walls and heaps of rubbish, in place of what had been the ancient mansion of the Devereuxs. The small garden (for such it was, though now a trampled field of desolation) had been called more especially Mr Devereux's garden. The glass-door of his library, and its large bay-window, as well as that of his bed-chamber above, had opened into it, and in this small secluded but sunny and cheerful spot it was that the old man had loved best to spend his solitary and contemplative hours.
Under the hedge on the side we had entered, had stood a range of bee-hives, the ruins of which were still remaining, though little more than heaps of mildewing thatch, and long deserted by the industrious colonies, to watch whose labours had been among the innocent pleasures of Mr Devereux; and Hallings pointed out some fragments of green trellis-work, in the angle of the holly wall, which had formed part of the old man's favourite arbour, where he would sit for hours with his book, or enjoying the ceaseless humming of the bees, as they gathered in their luscious harvest from the herbs and flowers he had collected in that quarter of the garden for their delight and sustenance.