THE MOTHS OF THE BANNERS. 281 



pleasant weather : that fiery Gules tells of resuscitated splen- 

 dours, rising Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old ; even that 

 deep-dyed Sable shadows forth garments of lustrous newness, 

 in lieu of faded rust ; but most of all significant is that regilded 

 Or } an actual emblem of the unseen agency, which has wrought 

 these renovating changes. 



All is silent amidst these refurbished vanities and whited 

 sepulchres, now more death-like than before their outward 

 resuscitation ; for during its process, the life which had been 

 harboured in this neighbourhood of mortality, had become 

 extinguished or dislodged. The owls had been driven from 

 the ivy, the swallows from the roof without, the bats from 

 the roof within, the bloated spiders from the mildewed walls, 

 the church-yard beetle and the death-watch from the pave- 

 ments and the wainscot. It was only in the fragments of the 

 ancient banner, cast down upon the flag-stones just beneath 

 the new, that any token of life remained. Two Moths yet lin- 

 gered herein, the only two which had not been put to flight 

 by the noise and stir of renovation. As the destructive pair 

 by turns glided or flitted over the dusty, dishonoured relics, 

 their silvery wings glancing in the moonlight they ac- 

 quired in the absence of all other visible existences, an im- 

 portance not their own ; and in the eye of superstition might 

 have seemed as spirits burst from the tombs around, spirits 

 of the brave who had often upreared that banner in its days 

 of pride, and were now risen in sorrow and in anger to bewail 

 its downfall. 



