And so, Bergan--remembering how surely the merely secular memorials of Sir Harry and his successors had been overtaken by the slow feet of decay, while these others had been saved by their connection with an institution having a deeper and broader principle of life--was led into a natural enough, though for him a most unusual, train of thought. He asked himself if Sir Harry would not have done better, even for his own selfish end, to have given the larger share (or, at least, an equal one) of his time, care, and money, to the edifice which had the surest hold upon permanency, and was most likely to be sacredly kept for its original purpose. In our country, more than almost anywhere else, people build houses for other people to dwell in, and Time delights to blot family names from his roll, at least on the page where they were first written. All family mansions, however fair and proud, are surely destined to fall into stranger hands, or to be given over to the Vandal occupation of decay. All families, of however lofty position, are certain to sojourn, at times, in the valley of humiliation, if they do not lose themselves in the deeper valley of extinction. Would it not have been better, then, to have foregone somewhat of the frail and faithless magnificence of Bergan Hall, and linked the dear family name and memory more closely with the indestructible institution which belongs to the ages?
And, as he thus questioned, the narrow walls, the low roof, and the insignificant adornments of the little church seemed slowly to widen and lift themselves to the grand proportions of a vast, pillared temple; and the small chancel window--doing so little, nor doing that little well, to keep alive the fair memory of "Elizabeth, wife of Sir Harry"--became a great glory of pictured saints and angels, through whose diaphanous bodies the rainbow-light fell softly among a crowd of kneeling worshippers;--unto whom the sculptured mural tablets, the jewel-tinted glass, the stately walls, the soaring arch, told over and over again the lovely story, and held up to view the noble example, of a race whose labor and delight it had been to build strong and beautiful the walls of Zion; and which, in so doing, had raised up to itself the most enduring, as well as the most precious of earthly monuments. How much better this than the crumbling splendors of Bergan Hall, and the fading glory of an almost extinct name!