It
stood at the entrance of the adjoining village, and under its rustic
porch he had immediately entered, to engage a lodging beneath its
humble sign, "The Plough," for the few clays of his intended visit to
Lady Tinemouth. A boy had been his guide, and bearer of his small
travelling bag, from the famous old Commandery inn, the "Angel," at
Grantham, where the Wold diligence had set him down in the afternoon
at the top of the market-place of that memorable town of ancient
chivalry, to find his way up to the occasional rural palace cells on
Harrowby Hill, of the same doughty and luxurious knights who were now
lying, individually forgotten, in their not only silent but unknown
graves, there not being a trace of them amongst the chapel ruins of
the Abbey, nor below the hill, on the sight of the old Commandery
church at Grantham.
"Ah, transit mundi!" exclaimed Thaddeus to himself, with a calmed
sigh, as he thought on those things, while resting under the modest
little portal of the hotel, whose former magnificence, when a hermit
cell, might still be discernible in a few remaining remnants of the
rich Gothic lintel yet mingling with the matted straw and the
clinging ivy of the thatch.
"What art thou, world, and thine ambitions?" again echoed in silence
from the heart of Thaddeus. "Though yet so young, I have seen thee in
all thy phases which might wean me from this earth.
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