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A little altar for sacrifice to Jupiter was raised on the true altar, the Temple was dedicated to Jupiter, as was also that of the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, the Sabbath was abolished, so was circumcision, and on the day of the king's birth, in each month, the Jews were forced to eat swine's flesh, and partake of idol sacrifices, and, at the feast of the god of wine, to carry ivy in the mad drunken processions in his honour.
The station is at the park gates in fact, the railway and the canal run through the property. A short drive through a fine avenue of big trees skirting broad lawns brought us to the house, which looked very imposing with its long façade and rows of lighted windows. We drove through arcades covered with ivy into a very large court-yard, the château stables and communs taking three sides.
Their way now lay through a beautiful valley, beside a picturesque stream, tunneling its course through wild ivy and magnificent banks of calmia, and under the wide spreading limbs of pines and hemlocks. The country appeared to be a wilderness, and Paul could not help feeling that the real world of flesh and ambition lay upon the other side of the ridge, now far behind.
Two cracked bells hung in its crumbling square tower, disturbing once a week the jackdaws that built in the ivy. Just once a week ever since the Dark Ages, was Juliet's reflection as she dutifully obeyed the somewhat querulous-sounding summons on the following day. She could not picture their ringing for any bridal festivity, though it seemed possible that they might sometimes toll for the dead.
Nor were these all to assure me that, after a year of melancholy and eventful absence, I looked again upon the precincts of home. A little farther on rose the gray wall and tower of the library and belfry, half concealed by its heavy coating of ivy, glossy and dark, and shutting away all other view of the mansion.
There was a dissenting chapel, old enough to be overgrown with ivy and not too hideous, erected by the Nonconformists in the reign of the Great Deliverer, but this partook of the general decadence of the parish, and, as we found, the chapel's principal use was to serve as an excuse for not going to church.
The spikes of the portcullis frowned above in threatening array, but a wreath of ivy was twining up the groove by which it had once descended, and the archway, which by day stood hospitably open, was at night only guarded by two large oaken doors, yielding to a slight push.
We mention this, chiefly to illustrate the early strength of Margaret's character a strength concealed under a hundred freakish whims and humours, as an ancient and massive buttress is disguised by its fantastic covering of ivy and wildflowers.
To know the elm-tree you must not come too near, for it too is wild and does not reveal its nature lightly; you may be cooler in the shadow of the beech or stand drier beneath the red-stemmed leaves of the sycamore. Yet it suffers the clinging ivy; it was beloved of poets in old days, and painters love it still. It has not the walnut's vivid green nor the rare flush that lights up the pine-stem.
There, now you can see the house." The mansion lay somewhat low, with hanging woods in the rear: and the old-fashioned fish-ponds gleaming in the sunshine and overshadowed by gigantic trees increased the venerable stillness of its aspect. Ivy and innumerable creepers covered one side of the house; and long weeds cumbered the deserted road.
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