24 3$ratigatc palace. 



of ferns and wallflowers that spring from out the cran- 

 nies, the rents of ruin, which time has made in the old 

 walls. Butterflies shut and open their gorgeous wings 

 on the golden disk of that hright flower, which loves to 

 fling its friendly mantle over fallen greatness, and now 

 carpets with luxuriant vegetation the broken pavement, 

 through the interstices of which its broad leaves rise up. 

 Birds are singing on the trees, and bees come humming 

 to gather pollen from the flowers of the noble chesnuts 

 that droop in all their beauty and luxuriance over the 

 old ruins. Those who have long ceased from among the 

 living used to gaze on them, and gather their beautiful 

 tufts of pyramidical white flowers with which to adorn 

 the open spaces in the oriel window. They grew here 

 far back as the reign of Edward, when the great park of 

 Bradgate, with its circumference of seven miles, came 

 into the possession of the Earl of Ferrars, for the chesnut 

 is a tree of long duration, and the stately group is be- 

 ginning to decline. Little now remains of the once 

 princely mansion, the palace, large and fair and beau- 

 tiful, as wrote the historian Fuller. The walls are low 

 and roofless, broken and dismantled, and scarcely is it 

 possible to point out the different apartments that once 

 resounded with cheerful voices. All is still and lonely 

 now; the tilt-yard is nearly perfect, but none are playing 

 there; the garden-walls, with their broad terrace- walks, 

 remain entire, but none are walking there; gray and 

 yellow lichens, with tufts of moss, dot over the old 



