There is a _feeling of respect_ inspired by ancient buildings of
importance. Such a castle as Warwick, which has lodged a succession of
generations of the most opposite characters--at one time the "dulcis et
quieti animi vir, et qui, cougruo suis moribus studio, vitam egit et
clausit;" at another by the assassin of Piers de Gaveston, the king's
favourite, "whose head he cut off upon Blacklow Hill, and gave the friars
preachers the charge of his body, inasmuch as he had called the said earl
the Black Dog of Arderne"--is not to be approached as one visits a
handsome stone house of Palladian architecture!--such a house we know can
never have been the scene either of council or conspiracy; within such
walls there can never have been "latens odium inter regem et proceres, et
præsecipuè inter comitem de Warwick et adhærentes ejusdem."
As to the river and its swans. I have learned from the bard to whom it
has been long since consecrated, (although he may not have had the right
of fishing in it when alive,) that "discretion is the better part of
valour."
If I were to describe the walks, I should only say that they were
contrived, as all walks ought to be, to let in the sun or to shut him out
by turns. Here you rejoice in the fulness of his meridian strength, and
here in the shadows of various depth and intensity, which a well disposed
and happily contrasted sylvan population knows how to effect. The
senatorial oak, the spreading sycamore, the beautiful plane, (which I
never see without recollecting the channel of the Asopus and the woody
sides of Oeta,) the aristocratic pine running up in solitary stateliness
till it equal the castle turrets--all these, and many more, are admirably
intermingled and contrasted, in plantations which establish, as every
thing in and about the castle does, the consummate taste of the late
earl, although it must be admitted he had the finest subjects to work
upon, from the happy disposition of the ground. I shall never forget the
first time I walked over them; a pheasant occasionally shifting his
quarters at my intrusion, and making his noisy way through an ether so
clear, so pure, so motionless, that the broad leaves subsided, rather
than fell to the ground, without the least disturbance; the tall grey
chimneys just breathing their smoke upon the blue element, which they
scarcely stained; every green thing was beginning to wear the colour of
decay, and many a tint of yellow, deepening into orange, made me sensible
that "there be tongues in trees," if not "good in every thing." But
Montaigne says nothing is useless, _not even inutility itself_.