THE DISMANTLED PALACE. 335 heavy sculptured Wainscotts of Walnut wood and Larch, soon began to acknowledge, with those panelled Walls themselves, what turbulent and destructive visitors the shattered Lattices had let in. The round socket of the Clock-dial remained on the Great Bell-tower; but, alas! the Clock itself lay, face upward, on the flagged pavement of the Court below, amidst a rank bed of huge nettles, and docks, and mallows, which its own weight had framed for it, and which waved over it to the sullen winds in mockery of Mourning. A dire split traversed diagonally its sumptuous frontlet, with all its gilded figures distinct though dim; and you felt that human eloquence could never have pronounced so pathetic an Elegy on the Pile that moulders above it as this downstricken Disk, once the golden rival of the Sun in mid air, the Herald of Time, the Monitor of Men, the Governor of gorgeous Festivals, the solemn and sublime Oracle of Day and Night,—supine, unheeded, useless,-upon the weed-worn pavement, at once the Symbol and the Moral of Decay, and, in its very Silence, trumpet-tongued with that tremendous Legend, "TIME WAS!" The Swallow, with each returning Summer, shewed by her loved mansionry in the rich entablature and cross beams of the superb oak Ceilings, how infinitely she preferred "To make her pendent bed and procreant cradle" 336 THE SPIDER IN KINGS' PALACES.' within apartments sheltered from the onslaught of the elements, to any Buttress, or coign of vantage," which the exterior of the Palace could boast. As for that insect Dionysius, the Spider, he seemed to have abandoned every other nook in Huis Windenburg for the purpose of weaving his curtains and building his geometrical dens in those sunny Chambers, wherein, for their own sakes, the Twin Brothers had maintained the many coloured and ample casements inviolable and entire. Dim with deep layers of undisturbed dust, through which the broadest and boldest Meridian struggled to find its way, it was here that Heywood might have witnessed what he so poetically pourtrays "Behold the Battilments! in every Loope How th' Ordnance lieth, Flies far and near to fatch; Behold how every Piece that lieth there in group Hath a Spider-Gunner with ready fired match. Behold, on the Walls, Spiders making rare Watch, The Watch-Spider in the Tower, alarum to strike At approach of any Nomber shewing warlike." Spider and Fly. Years rolled away with so much monotony that their flight was scarcely perceptible. The melancholy pinions of Time, all sable and gray to the secluded Brothers, possessed not that varie GOLDEN OPINIONS. 337 gation to mark his flight which, to the prosperous, makes his plumage seem, all silvery and rosecoloured as it is, only too regretful a Remembrance of Life's swiftness and decay. To them those Four great Mansion-halls of Nature, the Seasons, with their many-coloured Dial, the blooming and fading Flowers, existed not; or, if indeed they did, they were all merged in that Winter which made the mangy fur robe and the scanty hearth-fire necessary; and in that Snow which blocked up their dingy windows, needlessly barricaded their iron-banded door, or flung itself, an unheeded visitant, in sullen drifts upon the painted pavements of their unlatticed Saloons! Years rolled on, but, at length, not without a change. By degrees a murmured Report, scarcely audible, and still less credible, at first, arose among their fellow-citizens that the Brothers Baumgarten were beginning to raise their heads above the water. Thereto succeeded a louder rumour that they were warm men. Upon this, in due season, was engrafted the assertion that their wealth was enormous; and by the time that the Twin Baumgartens attained the hoary confines of dotage, and their Palace Home had scarcely a stone to stand upon, all this gossip had settled down in the confirmed opinion, (which the abject penury of their habits tended rather to corroborate than to repress,) that the riches of the Twin Misers, as they now began to be called, far Ꮓ transcended the power of Fable or the flights of Imagination. Fame said that in the bye-corners and recesses, the countless and unimaginable Hiding-holes of Huis Windenburg, "Silver in Bags heap'd up, Like Billets sawn and ready for the fire, Heaven's abstract or epitome! Rubies, Sapphires, A Manour bound fast in a skin of Parchment, The Wax continuing good, the Acres melting, Now all this Tale of Affluence was about precisely as correct as such reports in general are; that is, about one half was truth, and one half falsehood. The first resolution of Raphael and Michael Baumgarten, upon the Evening of their Father's Funeral, was to strain every nerve and faculty for the retrieval of the Burgomaster's lost Wealth, even though they should die in the attempt. Their second determination decreed that Self Denial should reinforce their Enterprise, and that moreover to the very dissolution of Flesh and Spirit. Accordingly their very inconsiderable remainder of Money was at first embarked in so judicious an Adventure, that its uncalculated success enabled the Brothers to proceed from more to more :— while the inevitable disappointments which occasionally embarrassed their Speculations tended rather to animate than to discourage their aggrandising impulse; and the occasional losses they encountered were far more than counterbalanced by their subordinate Spirit, Parsimony. other Familiar Demons, it was for ever at their elbow, until at length, from having been their officious Minister, it became their tyrannical Master. Like They had, by this time, become steeped to the lips in all the deleterious consequences resulting from the Flood of Gold,-that tide tenfold more hardening than the waters of Styx, which rendered only the exterior, the skin and flesh, invulnerable; while this communicates its direful petrifaction to the very heart itself. And yet, all adamantine as they were, there was a touch from the holy fingers of Nature, that might have softened even them; a voice of Pity, if not of Affection, that might have found an answer even in their preoccupied bosoms. And that touch did affect them, as much as the breath of May doth |