Spring, however, now and then gives us a beautiful day—to shew, if she does make a promise, she has a stock of sunshine on hand wherewith to keep it. Such a day was now shining on Norville Abbey. The gray mist, which imparts such indescribable beauty to an English landscape, was now illuminated with the morning light, and hung round the turrets a bright transparent mass of vapour, which you seemed to expect would every moment clear away, like those which, in the valley of St. John, opened and gave to view the enchanted castle. They never did clear away—still it was something to have expected.
One side of the building was completely covered with ivy: it was like a gigantic bower; and the numerous windows where the branches had been pruned, seemed like vistas cut in the luxuriant foliage. The rest of the walls were stained and gray, carved with all varieties of ornament; flowers cut in the stone, the cross at every angle, the winged heads representing the cherubim—niches, where male and female saints stood in divers attitudes of prayer—and arched lattices, whose small glittering panes seemed too thankful for a sunbeam not to reflect it to the utmost. The imagination must
