Ernest Maltravers, Book 1

due f

heavy sorrow

love, and fi

father, pay th

f Henry IV./,

seemed an age before the peasant within was aroused from the deep sleep of labour-loving health.

er Ernest, the squire was a

Heaven!

ncient groves. The moonlight slept soft upon the sward, and the cattle, distur

and melancholy trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the laughing landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something of shadow and solemn gloom upon minds that feels their associations, like that which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the cathedral aisles of Nature with their darkened vistas,

the room in which the sick man slept. The bell rang shrilly out from amidst the dark ivy that clung around the porch. The h